Lance Armstrong rescued Bradley Wiggins when he was at the rock bottom: "He has been there for me recently"

Former Olympic champion and Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins had turbulent past months and years, but after hitting rock bottom, he seems to be back on the track to rebuild his life. The story of his return has one unexpected hero: the cycling outcast Lance Armstrong!

After ending his active cycling career, Wiggins quickly got into trouble. "I started living my life as a normal person at 36. I was always wary of people blowing smoke up my a---, because I didn’t think much of myself. Once cycling was gone, this veil of being Bradley Wiggins went, too. I had to deal with myself. And I didn’t like myself very much," The Telegraph quotes Wiggins.

"Within three years of retiring, I was a drug addict," Wiggins continues. "And a lot of it was to do with this recall of my childhood. I had grown up with an absent father and the contradiction is that the coach who abused me was my first male role model in cycling. You’re only 13, but it leads to a really dark period"

Wiggins was also declared bankrupt. "I regret I never paid attention to my financial affairs when I was racing. It’s one of the things that happens to athletes – you make a lot of money and, if you haven’t got your eyes on it, people take advantage. I was getting ripped off left, right and centre by the people looking after me. Accountants as well."

Wiggins says that work is now underway to resolve the situation. "It’s all resolved now. I’m on the front foot now. This was something that was done to me. Eight months on, it has all turned around. The people who are responsible are paying a heavy price for it. Fortunately, it’s all good. My life’s in a good place."

The former cyclist recovered thanks in part to Lance Armstrong, who paid for Wiggins' therapy. "It’s great. I’ve really got to know him over the past eight years, and he has been there for me in recent times. He packed me off to this extensive therapy centre, paid for it all. He had a very similar upbringing to me – a fatherless upbringing. You can’t will this stuff away, he told me. You have to sort it out. On the human side."

Beneath the villain mask that is known to whole cycling world, Armstrong seems to have a kind side after all. "You always have to put this disclaimer in with Lance: Yeah, he took drugs and all that. That’s a different part of it, very polarising. It’s an open wound in cycling. But in terms of me being here, being alive, he has really helped. He has done the same for Jan Ullrich. The three of us grew up without a father."