Depression is such a personal and painful experience that it is capable of creating surprising complicities.
How Alastair Campbell, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's overwhelming and irascible communication director, manages to snatch from the 2012 Tour de France champion, Bradley Wiggings (Ghent, Belgium, 41 years old), a confession buried for years.
“I was sexually courted by a coach when I was very young, when I was about 13 years old, and it is something that I have never been able to fully accept,” the five-time Olympic champion told the former political adviser.
The term he uses in his story is
grooming,
which in Spanish would be the manipulation of someone vulnerable, lonely or dependent, normally in a relationship of trust (student and teacher, for example), to prepare possible physical sexual abuse.
Wiggins doesn't go that far in accusing him, but recounts how what happened affected him in his later adult life and "tried to bury him."
"My stepfather was a violent man, who called me a 'faggot' for wearing lycra clothes [the equipment used by cyclists], and it never occurred to me to tell him that," confesses Wiggins, who in the interview also explains how the sport rescued from his solitary nature.
"He was a weird teenager, in a lot of ways, and I think the love of riding a bike came from all that previous adversity," says Wiggins.
It is not the first time that the British athlete, who has enjoyed great popularity in his country since his victory in France a decade ago - the first time a Briton had achieved it - has spoken of his battle with depression and his childhood trauma.
He had never, however, gone as far as his interview with Campbell, revealing how all that vulnerability drew the attention of potential sexual predators.
The fame and popularity that he obtained with his sporting triumphs —”probably the most unfortunate period of my life, with all the social pressures that it entailed”, he has confessed— were paradoxically questioned years later.
The 2016 leak by Russian hackers of the World Anti-Doping Agency files revealed that Wiggins was able to inject triamcinolone, to treat asthma, before the 2011 and 2012 Tours. It was then a legal and permitted therapeutic exception, but very questioned by medical professionals, who point out how, among other effects, this corticosteroid facilitates training and improves the athlete's power.
Wiggins explains to Campbell during the interview what his recipe is for keeping the specter of depression under control: “I have a routine.
It is important to train every day and not drink too much.
If I don't watch myself, depression manifests in the form of manias,” he explains.