Once again Bradley Wiggins opens his diary and tells his story. He did so in an interview with The Observer, talking about his battle against a severe cocaine addiction that characterized his post-career. A year ago, the 2012 Tour de France winner managed to quit by leveraging his willpower and the support of those close to him.

"There were days when my son thought he would find me dead the next morning. I was a full-blown drug addict. People didn't realize it, but I was under the influence of drugs most of the time. I was consuming enormous quantities of cocaine, my children wanted to send me to rehab, and I was walking on a razor's edge."

One of the people who helped Wiggins was Lance Armstrong, although it wasn't always easy to help the Briton. "Sometimes they wouldn't hear from me for days. Now I can talk about it openly. But then there was an element of lying, a kind of omertà. For me, there are no half-measures, and my tendency towards addiction alleviated the pain I was living with."

At one point, Wiggins realized he had a "big problem". "I had to stop, and I'm lucky to still be here. I was a victim of my choices for many years. I already felt a lot of contempt for myself, but now I've made it worse. It was a form of self-harm and self-sabotage. I wasn't the person I wanted to be. I realized I was hurting the people around me."

These were the years of marital breakdown, financial difficulties, and suspicions about his career, particularly the famous package that arrived at the Sky team's retreat during the Critérium du Dauphiné. However, his drug problems perhaps stem from even further back, and Wiggins is preparing to discuss them in his autobiography, titled The Chain, to be published by the end of the year. He will talk about his childhood traumas, his turbulent cycling career, and subsequent drug addiction, hoping to now start writing more serene chapters.