It’s fair to say January has not always been the kindest of months for Cath Wiggins. Two years ago, it marked the finalisation of her divorce from Sir Bradley Wiggins, the Olympic champion cyclist and, until then, her husband of 16 years.

By January last year, relations between the pair had deteriorated so much they were no longer on speaking terms.

‘Prior to Christmas, we hadn’t exchanged so much as a text message for 18 months,’ Cath tells me. It scarcely helped that the catastrophic state of Bradley’s finances – he was declared bankrupt in June 2024 – had necessitated the sale of the beloved family home, a sprawling farmhouse in Lancashire.

I met Cath then, in the aftermath of this shocking revelation, when it emerged that Bradley had been reduced to sofa surfing and was even contemplating selling his trophies to make ends meet. ‘I don’t always know where he’s sleeping,’ she’d confided.

Their divorce had not been easy, but in a candid and emotional interview, she spoke out in support of her troubled ex-husband, calling for compassion towards him in what she acknowledged was a ‘desperate situation’. At this point, the publication of Bradley’s bombshell autobiography lay in the future, and there was a lot Cath didn’t say.

A year later, when The Chain was published, he laid bare in astonishing detail his struggles with drug addiction – he admitted taking drugs from 2018 until he finally got sober in 2024 – and the abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his cycling coach.

Among the eye-watering revelations was his disclosure that he would stay up all night snorting cocaine – at one particularly bleak point off one of his gold medals – before returning home to do the school run for their two children, Ben, now 20 and Bella, 19.

Cath Wiggins was married to the Olympic champion cyclist Sir Bradley Wiggins for 16 years, until their divorce was finalised two years ago

Bradley and Cath at the 2004 Olympic Games, held in Athens, celebrating his gold, silver and bronze medals

Today, in her first interview since then, Cath admits she didn’t know the worst of it. However there was one grim occasion, which featured in the book, in which she was called on to play a pivotal role.

In 2023, when they’d been separated for nearly four years, Cath came to Bradley’s rescue after a near-fatal drugs binge in a London hotel room. Bradley recalled how he phoned his son begging for help and that Ben and Cath went to London and ‘essentially staged an intervention’.

‘Between them, they helped me get back on my feet,’ he wrote. ‘They gave me a reason to live.’

Today she tells for the first time how she dropped everything that weekday afternoon when Ben told her he had received calls from friends telling him they were worried about his dad.

‘At that point it wasn’t about who was right or wrong, or about divorce,’ she says. ‘It was just about making sure he was OK.’

After a panic-stricken train journey to the capital, she arrived at her estranged husband’s London hotel room to be greeted by a room strewn with drugs – including dozens of vials in a bag.

‘There was so much paraphernalia everywhere,’ she says quietly. ‘He could have died. But thank God he was still there.’

Bradley, while conscious was ‘in a state’. ‘By then I was not easily shocked but it was very hard to see,’ she says.

‘With just one look at him, I knew it was a do or die moment, that if he carried on like this he would be leaving the room in a body bag’ she recalls, her voice faltering. ‘I told him that we needed to get help or there was going to be a catastrophe.’

She helped him sober up but then felt she had to return to their children who were then in their mid to late teens.

‘I was torn in two – he’s on his own in a London hotel, my kids are at home in Lancashire. I felt I had to go back and sort the kids out, but then I returned first thing the next morning. I left him a note [while he slept] saying “try and make a good choice”.’

Yet while she ‘pushed very hard’ for rehab while she was with him, Bradley refused.

‘I stayed another day and in the end I arranged a short term rental for him in London, as well as sorting out gym classes and meal delivery to give him some structure. Before I left, I made him promise that he would sort his life out.’

Today, she thinks that her intervention, and that of Ben and Bella, who went to stay with him a few days later, saved his life.

‘I always think that whatever else I did in life, I did that,’ she says. ‘He didn’t manage to completely kick the drugs then, but I think he saw some light for the first time.’

It was not until mid-2024, after finally attending rehab paid for by the disgraced American cyclist Lance Armstrong – whom Bradley considered a friend despite the fact he was stripped of his Tour de France titles after admitting using performance enhancing drugs – that Bradley became fully sober.

The couple kiss after his victory in the 99th Tour de France, in July 2012. He was the first Briton to win the cycling race

The couple and their children Bella and Ben after he was awarded a knighthood by the Queen at Buckingham Palace in December 2013

Given this catalogue of drama, you might expect the 44-year-old to have some strong words about her ex-husband. But, she says, the opposite is true.

Cath says she believes they have both made peace with their past.

‘I honestly wish him nothing but the best, and I think he feels the same towards me,’ she says.

‘We spent some of Christmas Day together as a family and it was genuinely lovely. Bradley just seems in a much better place – he’s sober, calmer and happier – and it felt like we’d got our little family back in a way that I don’t think anyone would have expected.’

She adds: ‘After so much turmoil, I think this really is a new chapter.’

One can only hope so, for few would have predicted such an outcome even a few months ago given the headlines that had surrounded Bradley Wiggins – ‘Sir Wiggo’ following his 2013 knighthood – in recent years.

One of the country’s greatest athletes, with a Tour de France victory, five Olympic gold medals and eight World Championship titles to his name, he is also one of its most troubled. His retirement from professional cycling in 2016 was overshadowed by the stain of a drugs controversy surrounding the contents of a mysterious Jiffy bag delivered to him in France in 2011. Despite his vehement denials, the scandal lingered, even after a 2017 investigation found insufficient evidence that it contained a banned substance.

By 2018, Bradley had started taking prolific amounts of cocaine, and in May 2020 – by now having left his family – he announced his separation from Cath on social media without consulting her.

Months later, it emerged he had fathered a daughter, Ava, with PR Laura Hartshorne.

‘It could have been handled better, but nobody’s perfect,’ she says, refusing to judge. ‘It wasn’t a nice time in my life – there were lots of tears – but at the same time I knew what he’d been through. He wasn’t, and never has been, a bad person.’

In 2022, Bradley revealed in a harrowing interview with former spin doctor Alastair Campbell that he had been abused by his cycling coach at the age of 13, a trauma so buried that for years he denied anything had happened.

Then, in the summer of 2024, came news of his bankruptcy, and with it the suggestion that this national hero – rumoured to be worth £13 million – was considering selling his trophies to raise funds.

It is little wonder, then, that Cath’s eyes fill with tears as she talks about recent events.

‘He’s been through an awful lot,’ she says. ‘We both have.’

For as Bradley himself wrote, in his 2012 autobiography, My Time, Cath was the ‘constant one’ – the person who knew the reality behind the swaggering ‘Sir Wiggo’ persona, complete with sideburns, tattoos and rock-and-roll bravado, that he presented to the world. It was a persona he has since admitted was largely a construct. Cath knew that all along.

Bradley and Cath at the GQ Men of the Year Awards in 2012. They had been friends since 1997 and began dating in 2002

In his autobiography The Chain, Bradley laid bare in astonishing detail his struggles with drug addiction – he admitted taking drugs from 2018 until he finally got sober in 2024 – and the abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his cycling coach

A former cyclist herself, who went on to train as a radiographer before giving up work to support Bradley’s career and raise their children, she quickly sensed hidden undercurrents to the man she had known as a friend since 1997 and started dating in 2002.

They had been together only a few months when, in 2003, they’d visited Bradley’s mother Linda, and she had handed her son a letter from British Cycling relating to allegations made against her son’s former coach, Stan Knight.

Bradley later revealed that when his mother asked if something similar had happened to him, he denied it. ‘We drove home and he was just really quiet,’ Cath recalls.

‘I had this feeling that whatever this was about, to leave it for now, but don’t just sweep it under the carpet for ever.’

She adds: ‘I remember putting the letter on the telephone table when we got home and saying, “You know, you can talk about that if you want”.’

But it was only after his retirement that Bradley was able to speak fully to his wife about what had happened – the first time he had opened up to anyone.

Cath does not want to go into detail about those conversations, but her expression says enough.

‘Shame only belongs to one person, and that’s the perpetrator,’ she says. ‘But it takes a long time for a victim to understand that.’

The trauma ran so deep Cath arranged counselling for them both but believes it wasn’t enough.

‘With the doping scandal, it was just one thing after another, and he never really had any peace or quiet to process it.’

At the same time, Cath was battling her own challenges. In 2015 she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after years of mental health struggles, including a period that saw her hospitalised for a week. ‘There are ups and downs, but I’m in a stable place at the moment,’ she says. Meanwhile Bradley’s substance abuse, which he has said began in 2018, initially unfolded largely out of sight.

‘I feel stupid for not picking him up on it sooner,’ Cath says now. ‘He was away a lot, but when he was home he just wasn’t himself at all but I couldn’t put my finger on why. I put it down to struggling with retirement and his past.’

Wiggins is one of the country’s greatest athletes, with a Tour de France victory, five Olympic gold medals and eight World Championship titles to his name

Cath says she believes they have both made peace with their past. ‘I honestly wish him nothing but the best, and I think he feels the same towards me,’ she says

Certainly, the laid-back, fun-loving father figure had been replaced by a restless, volatile presence, creating a strain on their marriage. In a narrative familiar to the loved ones of any addict, Bradley kept denying there was a problem when Cath raised concerns. It was only when he was ready to help himself that intervention was possible. That long process began in 2023 when he phoned his son, Ben, begging for help.

Yet Cath’s rescue mission did not initially mark a new chapter for the now divorced couple.

‘Communication just stopped between us, and I’m not really sure why,’ Cath says.

Bradley’s contact with Ben and Bella became erratic, too. ‘He missed a couple of birthdays which just wasn’t like him.’

There was no contact even when, last summer, Cath was rushed to hospital with sepsis.

‘It wasn’t about me – it was about the kids,’ she says. ‘They’re not young children, but they still needed their dad.’

It’s been a long road to recovery and one Bradley is still traversing. In November, he revealed he was travelling to the United States to attend a specialist trauma clinic, also funded by Lance Armstrong.

Cath does not know what the treatment involved. ‘That’s his story to tell,’ she says.

But it appears to have been a turning point: after he left the clinic Ben and Bella flew to Miami to spend time with their father, and it was they who suggested he come to the family home on Christmas Day.

‘It was really nice,’ Cath says of their ‘few hours’ together that afternoon. ‘He’d got a lot of presents for the kids which they opened while I cooked dinner, and while he didn’t stay for the meal I fed him a few bits here and there,’ she smiles.

She’s clearly very proud of her children. Ben, who is about to turn 21 and is a professional cyclist like his father is enjoying a flourishing career, while Bella, 19, is enjoying a gap year after finishing her A levels. Both still live at home, though Ben spends much of his time in Europe.

That home, though, is about to change: the family place has finally been sold, and Cath is moving to a smaller property in the coastal town of Lytham, close to her work as a self-employed physiotherapist.

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‘It’s been hard, but I’ve made my peace with it,’ she says.

‘There were a lot of factors involved in what happened financially. It certainly wasn’t all Bradley’s fault. There were tax issues, for a start, and as quickly as you can make money, there are people even quicker to help you spend it.’

She is also unwavering in her belief that Bradley never used performance-enhancing drugs. ‘I know categorically that he didn’t,’ she says. ‘Those accusations sent him into freefall because they struck at the heart of his identity and his ability on a bike.’

She also tells me she is yet to read his autobiography.

‘A friend told me that as someone who once cared deeply about him, I might find it hard going,’ she says.

But she plans to and when she does, she may be moved by Bradley’s acknowledgement of the toll the past decade has taken on her.

‘Cath is as big a casualty of the last 12 years as anyone,’ he writes. ‘She paid the ultimate price for being my wife.’

Cath takes a more forgiving view. ‘I think we all paid a heavy price,’ she says. ‘I think what’s really sad is that his absolutely stellar career has almost been forgotten – even by him.

‘And more than anything, I hope he can find pride in that again, because he deserves it.’