Britain's Wiggins says he owes recovery from addiction to Armstrong's support
Last month former Tour de France winner Wiggins said he became addicted to cocaine after his retirement from the sport in 2016 and was "lucky" after getting sober a year ago.
The 45-year-old described Armstrong, who was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles for doping, as a "great strength and inspiration" after receiving his support since ending his career.
"Lance has been very, very good to me. That's not something everyone wants to hear because people only like to hear the bad stuff," Wiggins said in an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live on Friday.
"It's on a human level. You can only take someone how they treat you.
"Lance has been a source of inspiration to me and a constant source of help towards me and is one of the main factors why I'm in this position I am today mentally and physically, so, I'm indebted to him for that."
Wiggins became the first Briton to win the Tour de France in 2012 and collected a then-British record eight Olympic medals, including gold in the time trial at the 2012 London Games.
He is now collaborating on Armstrong's podcast The Move, where they will be covering this summer's Tour de France, and said their relationship has been grounded in mutual understanding beyond cycling.
In December last year, Wiggins said Armstrong had offered to fund his therapy for mental health issues.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
12 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Eagle-eyed fans spot Chelsea update after becoming 'first ever Club World Cup champions' - but have Man United, Man City and Liverpool followed FIFA's call?
Chelsea have officially updated their honours board to reflect their status as the 'first ever' Club World Cup champions. The Blues beat Champions League winners, and favourites for the Club World Cup, Paris Saint-Germain 3-0 in the final of the tournament just over a week ago. It was a shock result, but an emphatic win on the night, with Chelsea taking home the all-new trophy, as well as a hefty cash prize in the first iteration of the tournament in its 32-team format. It had previously been fought between just six or eight teams. After the Blues' victory, it was announced that previous winners of the Club World Cup would now be known as 'FIFA Intercontinental Champions', with FIFA themselves dubbing Enzo Maresca 's side as 'the first ever FIFA CWC Champions' on social media. This means that the the likes of Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Barcelona are effectively no longer world champions, while Chelsea also previously won the trophy in 2021. And the Blues have been quick to reflect the change in direction when updating their club honours board. The Blues' website has updated their triumph in the previous iteration of the competition On Chelsea's website under the 'Men's trophy cabinet' section, a new addition was noticed by eagle-eyed fans. Listing their triumphs below a section of text that read: 'Chelsea have won it all! Here we detail each and every one of our major trophy triumphs...,' the club added the FIFA Club World Cup from 2025. This was followed by a change to their triumph in the tournament's previous iteration, with this listed as the 'FIFA Intercontinental Cup (formerly FIFA Club World Cup)' from 2021. Back then, Chelsea beat Palmeiras 2-1 after extra time in the final thanks to a late Kai Havertz penalty. City won the original competition in 2023, Liverpool lifted it in 2019 and United in 2008. However, as of Tuesday morning, the three other English sides were yet to follow Chelsea's example in changing their honours roll. All of City, Liverpool and United were still listed as previous FIFA Club World Cup champions on their websites. Meanwhile, the competition had first been played in 2000 as the Club World Championship. It returned in 2005, and was played annually until 2023, before adopting its current form as the FIFA Intercontinental Cup in light of the Club World Cup this summer. Real Madrid won it the most times with five - most recently in 2022 - while Barcelona won it four times, and Corinthians and Bayern Munich twice. Real won the FIFA Intercontinental Cup in 2024, and it will return in 2025 where PSG will be representing Europe by virtue of winning Champions League.
The Independent
13 minutes ago
- The Independent
England receive Leah Williamson injury boost ahead of Italy clash in Euro 2025 semi-final
England captain Leah Williamson is set to be in contention to start Tuesday's Euro 2025 semi-final against Italy after recovering from an ankle injury. Williamson was forced off after rolling her ankle during the quarter-final win over Sweden but was involved in the first 15 minutes of open training in Zurich on Monday. And Sarina Wiegman said on the eve of the match: 'It says she really wants to play, and she did everything to recover as good as possible, and she has, so she could be training today. When she recovers well, she's available tomorrow.' All of Wiegman's squad of 23 took part in the session following the gruelling clash with Sweden, including Lucy Bronze and Lauren James, who appeared to be limping after the penalty shoot-out win. Asked if she expected to have a fully fit squad for the semi-final, Wiegman said: 'That's what it looks like, yeah.' Defender Jess Carter, who announced on Sunday that she would be taking a step back from social media as a result of the 'vile' racist abuse she has received throughout the tournament, was also involved in training and Wiegman said she is 'ready to play'. 'Although it's a hard situation, Jess is a very strong person, and she wants to move on, too, but she also felt, and so did we, that we had to address this,' Wiegman said. 'You can't just let it go. So she did, we did, and then we know that there's a match going on and we want to perform. We're ready to perform. She's ready to perform and compete, and that says a lot about her and about the team.'
BBC News
14 minutes ago
- BBC News
Are Aston Martin a dark horse to sign Verstappen?
After a three-week break, the Formula 1 season resumes this weekend with the Belgian Grand Prix at the much-loved Spa-Francorchamps will be the first race with Laurent Mekies in charge of Red Bull, following Christian Horner's sacking as team Sport F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions. With Adrian Newey at Aston Martin and his history of making cars that Verstappen is strong in, does that make them dark horses to sign Max if he does leave Red Bull? - DanAston Martin already have two drivers committed for Alonso's contract runs out at the end of next season, and Lance Stroll will drive there for as long as he is the son of the owner, Lawrence Stroll, and the team effectively exists for means that if Verstappen were to want to leave Red Bull for Aston Martin, an arrangement would have to be reached with that Alonso gets his first chance to drive an Adrian Newey-designed car next year, the chances of him being especially amenable to that are low. Any pay-off in such circumstances would have to be very large indeed, one can said all of that, and while nothing is impossible in F1, and one can always be surprised, there does not seem to be any movement in this direction at the Verstappen is to leave Red Bull, it is most likely to be to Mercedes. Whether he will remains an open question for sense from little bits of information from here and there is that at this stage Verstappen is more likely to stay at Red Bull than not. But of course that could change. How hard is it for a team principal to step into a new team part way through the season? Particularly at Red Bull where the outgoing team principal seemed to have a lot of the control and responsibility. - SteveThe sacking of Christian Horner as Red Bull team principal is a big change. This weekend's Belgian Grand Prix will be the first time in Red Bull's 20-year history that someone else other than Horner is in charge of the replacement Laurent Mekies is a very capable person who is well respected within already has a good understanding of the Red Bull structure. He had been working as team principal at their second team since the start of last year and before that spent a decade there as an engineer before moving to the FIA in 2014. He has also worked at Ferrari, from as Racing Bulls source a lot of their parts from Red Bull, that means Mekies will already know a fair bit about his new will have spent the past two weeks getting to know Red Bull as well as he can at their Milton Keynes base - as well as a test day that he attended in the days immediately following his already knows he is stepping into a team that is immensely capable. He won't want to make massive changes the time being it will primarily be a question of watching, learning and understanding how and why things work as they do, and building a bank of knowledge from which he can then start to make the changes he feels will fix some of the issues that have developed in the past 18 months or so. In the context of teams focusing on 2026 cars, it is interesting that so many have introduced new floors over the past few races. Are floors more reusable for the new regulations than other parts, or do they simply provide the best value for money performance upgrade? - SamThe fact that teams are introducing new floors as upgrades this year is not in any way related to next year's new the current F1 cars, the floor is the most powerful part of the design in terms of aerodynamics, so it's inevitable that will be where teams focus their attention as they try to make their cars faster through the any floor that is introduced this year is not relevant to next year because the technical regulations for 2026 are completely different in aerodynamic so-called venturi floors that generate ground effect on the cars that have been in F1 since 2022 are being abandoned next F1 is returning to what are known as 'step-plane' floors - similar to the ones used prior to have a central section which is the lowest part of the floor, and then a 'step' either side to a higher section which, from the front of the floor to ahead of the rear tyres, is flat, rather than curved in a wing shape as the cars will have to be run differently from that era because the FIA has introduced a series of prescriptions with regard to what teams can do to control airflow in the rear corners of the to Mercedes technical director James Allison, these restrictions in the rules "make it harder to hang on to the downforce at high ride heights".In the era from 2017-21, there was a lot of discussion about the cars' Bull ran a high rake - a steeper angle from front to back - and Mercedes low. In other words, the Red Bull's rear was higher from the ground than the Mercedes'. Red Bull's was the style followed by most teams at the time, even though this was the era of ground-breaking Mercedes success. These approaches were to do with different philosophies of dealing with a phenomenon known as 'tyre squirt'.This is messy airflow created where the inner shoulder of the rear tyres meets the ground. It disturbs the clean flow of air teams want through the diffuser, the upswept part of the floor at the back of the want to try to clean up that airflow to increase downforce created by the diffuser, and under the previous rules there were various ways of doing that. But the new rules have aspects that are intended to impede that to Allison, this will likely mean that the cars next year typically run lower at the rear than in the previous generation - but not as low as the ground-effect cars of the current said: "The low ride-height Mercedes (of the previous era) is vastly higher than the cars of the current generation, and I suspect that the new generation cars will be in between where we are now and the lower end of the ranks that we saw in the 2014 to 2021 era." How can teams have a 'feel' for who is ahead in developing the new engines for 2026 when the manufacturers presumably keep everything as secret as possible? - AlexIt's a good question because, on the face of it, no one should know anything about the relative performance of next year's engines, because the manufacturers are all working on them in reality, though, F1 might be big business and have a huge following, but it is a relatively small world, and people a start, the manufacturers have to discuss their engines with governing body the FIA for a whole bunch of there is movement between teams and manufacturers in terms of employment - people leaving one team or engine company to work for another. When they get there, they will obviously take knowledge of where their previous employer was, and be able to share that with their new then there is just general gossip between people in the while individual manufacturers do their best to stop performance figures creeping out, inevitably they do, to some how an impression last time there was a major change of engine design, there was a lot of talk about Mercedes being ahead of the rest. No one knew for sure whether that was true until the cars first ran in pre-season testing, when it became immediately apparent that it situation this year feels very similar. Again, no one knows for sure, but the grapevine says that Mercedes are is a lot of complexity in the new engine architecture is changing, with the removal of the MGU-H, the part of the hybrid system that recovers energy from the power split of the engine is changing, with the electrical part of the engine now set to produce about 50% of total output, up from about 20% need to recover that much energy - in combination with the removal of the MGU-H, which had a powerful impact on recovery - has led to a change in the aerodynamic rules.F1 is introducing moveable aerodynamics - both the front and rear wing have high- and low-drag modes. The idea is that drag can be reduced on the straights, to increase speeds, to make braking distances longer, to increase the time energy can be recovered during deployment and recovery aspects of the engines will also be very different from example, the engines will likely be run at high revs during cornering simply so energy can be recovered for use on the straights. In that situation, the internal combustion engine is effectively being used as an energy generator for the there is the fully sustainable fuel, which is being manufactured without any use of fossil fuels. These will also have an impact on snippets of information about all these aspects of the new engines creep out one way or another, and a sense of who is in a good place and who is less so starts to it is, of course, all guesstimation at the moment.
