Bradley Wiggins - Personal Life

Personal Life

Wiggins is married to Catherine, and they have two children together, Ben and Isabella. The family lives in Eccleston, Lancashire, close to the Manchester Velodrome, the home of British Cycling and Team Sky. Wiggins speaks fluent French through his participation in French cycling teams, and he lived in France for a number of years. He is a well-known mod, owns a collection of classic motor scooters and guitars from the 1960s and 1970s, and is a keen musician and guitarist. He supports Liverpool Football Club and Wigan Warriors rugby league club.

Wiggins endured a difficult relationship with his father Gary, who made little effort to see Bradley throughout his childhood. Bradley knew that his father had been a professional cyclist, but nothing of his crimal past. They only met once, just before the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, and Bradley quickly became disillusioned at his father's alcohol and drug problems. Gary Wiggins died in Aberdeen, New South Wales in 2008, aged 55.

In a period after the 2004 Summer Olympics, Wiggins started to drink heavily. In a 2012 interview he said that he would arrive at his local pub when it opened, often staying to drink 12 pints of beer. He said this ended when his son Ben was born, explaining: "We had a baby. So then it was a case of, well, I've got to earn some fucking money and the responsibility takes over."

In April 2012 it was announced that Wiggins would collaborate with the Fred Perry clothing label "to develop an authentic, non-technical range of cycle wear". In 2012 he launched the Bradley Wiggins Foundation to draw people into sport and regular exercise.

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