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Wiggins has had well-publicised difficulties with his mental health and earlier this year he said he was doing “s---loads of cocaine” and had become a “functioning addict”. The former Tour de France winner, who was declared bankrupt last year, detailed his divorce, bankruptcy, sexual abuse by his first coach and doping allegations in his autobiography which was released last month. Armstrong, who was stripped of all seven of his Tour de France titles as part of one of the biggest doping scandals witnessed in sport, will pay for Wiggins’ rehab. “I’m off to America on Friday. He [Armstrong] has paid for me to go and see a top trauma counselling clinic in Utah so I’m looking forward to that,” Wiggins said during a talk at the Barbican in York. “He’s offered me a role back in cycling, a platform which doesn’t involve me getting on a bike.” Wiggins appeared on Armstrong’s podcast in October 2024, on which he discussed his financial troubles and how they could have been avoided as he “should have paid more attention” to his finances during his professional career. The Briton stressed he did not “condone” Armstrong using performance-enhancing drugs, but did claim that the punishment of losing his results and receiving a lifetime ban did not seem fair when considered against what other cyclists were getting away with. “He’s a good man,” Wiggins said of Armstrong in December last year. “He did what he did, it’s not to condone what he did, we all know that. But, it’s a bit disproportionate to what some people get away with in this world. “And Lance has got five children. He’s married and he’s got a heart under there somewhere. But he’s also got an ego the size of a house, don’t get me wrong. The ego is why he won seven tours − well he didn’t, or he did, who knows.” Armstrong came clean in 2013 about the drug ring operated within the US Postal Service cycling team that helped him to seven consecutive Tour victories between 1999 and 2005. The American was forced to pay $5m to the US government in a settlement following his revelation in an interview with US personality Oprah Winfrey.
