A former Tour de France winner was left homeless and penniless after his life spiralled out of control in heartbreaking circumstances. The athlete in question is one of Team GB's greatest ever Olympians, winning five gold medals and eight in total. He competed in track during the early part of his career before switching to road and taking his career to another level.
He won the Tour de France in 2012, becoming the first British cyclist to claim victory in the general classification. It brought him a knighthood the following year. He retired from all forms of professional cycling in 2016, at which point his life began to spiral as a result of drug addiction, homelessness and money troubles.
The cyclist in question is Sir Bradley Wiggins, who was declared bankrupt last year after burning through his £13million fortune. He was left homeless, being forced to stay with people close to him, and had to rebuild his life from the ground up.
Wiggins' lawyer Alan Sellers offered a harrowing insight at the time, telling the Daily Mail: "In reality, Brad is sofa-surfing. He stays with friends and family. I don't know where he stayed last night, I don't know where he will stay tonight or tomorrow night.
"He doesn't have an address. It is a total mess. He has lost absolutely everything. His family home, his home in Majorca, his savings and investments. He doesn't have a penny. It's a very sad state of affairs."
Wiggins also had debts of nearly £1m before he was homeless, including around £313,447 owed to HMRC. The situation was so bad that he was forced to consider selling his Olympic medals to make ends meet.

He was also battling a cocaine addiction, which he described as a coping mechanism in a candid interview with The Observer last year.
"There were times my son thought I was going to be found dead in the morning," said Wiggins. "I was a functioning addict. People wouldn't realise. Alcohol was never my thing, because my dad was an alcoholic, so I had to find something else.
"My proclivity to addiction was easing the pain that I lived with. They [his family] wouldn't hear from me for days on end. I can talk about these things candidly now. There was an element of me living a lie, in not talking about it.
"I was not the person I wanted to be. I realised I was hurting a lot of people around me. There's no middle ground for me. I can't just have a glass of wine. If I have a glass of wine, then I'm buying drugs."
Wiggins is now on the road to recovery and has started cycling again, which has been like a form of therapy after years of struggling on several fronts.
"I haven't had a bike for years and now I've got a bike again," he explained. "I forgot how much I loved being out on it. I have realised how much cycling gave me as a child.
"I'd thought in recent years it took everything away from me, but actually I only saw the negative sides of everything. Every time someone sees me it's: 'Oh, you're that cyclist', and I can never get away from it.
"For years I've said: 'I'm not a cyclist any more', and tried to redefine myself as something else. Every week there was something new I was going to do, whether it was rowing, trying to be a doctor.
"All these mad schemes I came up with, under the influence. Ultimately, cycling's where I get the most pleasure. It's my sanctuary."
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