Tour winner Bradley Wiggins reveals sad life of his Australian alcoholic father

Tour winner Bradley Wiggins reveals sad life of his Australian alcoholic father

The first was in the lead-up to the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games when, after a long estrangement, Wiggins travelled to Muswellbrook to visit his dad.

It was a disastrous experience, dominated by alcohol abuse, false promises and shattering reality.

Officially ordained as Tour de France champion, Wiggins still bristles at the mention of his former cyclist father, who died in suspicious circumstances in 2008.

He admitted to having trawled through a lifetime of experiences and reflections during the Stage 19 time-trial, which delivered cycling immortality.

"The last 10km I was thinking about things to spur me on to go even harder," Wiggins said.



"I was just thinking back to my childhood, my father leaving us when I was a kid, growing up with my mum in a flat and then my grandfather brought me up, he was my father, my role model. He died when I was on the Tour two years ago."

Wiggins addressed Gary's wasted life in his autobiography, In Pursuit Of Glory.

"Most of his days would consist of buying a couple of crates of VBs ... and steadily drinking himself into a stupor," Wiggins recalled of his traumatic visit to the Hunter Valley.

Remembering the day his father accompanied him to a competition, Wiggins said: "By the end of my race he was surrounded by a pile of tinnies, hammered and ... telling me what I had done wrong and how he would have won."

Wiggins never saw his father again.

On the 2008 Australia Day weekend, Wiggins received a call to say his father had been bashed and would not recover.

He did not fly to Australia for the funeral.

"I was almost glad he was gone," Bradley later wrote. "Or at least relieved there would be no more suffering."

With victory in the world's most famous bike race, Wiggins' status as the sport's greatest all-rounder is secure.

He has won three Olympic gold medals, seven world track titles and, now, outright success in the Tour de France.

Those responsible for his father's death have never been brought to account.

A witness described a party at a house in Aberdeen in New South Wales in 2008. Late in the evening, two men dragged Gary Wiggins out to the street.

The next day, Gary Wiggins was found almost dead outside the local cemetery.

His sister Glenda Hughes reportedly said he had been "beaten to a pulp". He was only 55 when he died.

As a track cyclist, Gary was talented and wayward. Off the bike, he was just as unpredictable.

Asked what his father would say about his Tour de France success, Wiggins said: "I don't know. It depends if he was sober.

"I think he would have been very proud."