He has spoken in detail about the situation
Bradley Wiggins has given detailed insight into what led him to being declared bankrupt.
The three-time Olympic gold medallist was declared bankrupt in June this year after years of financial struggles.
Speaking on the WEDU podcast, Wiggins suggested his money troubles began during his racing career when he assumed money ‘was going to be there forever’.
He said: “One of the things I regret is I never paid attention to my financial affairs when I was racing.
“Which is one of the things that happens to athletes you know, you make a lot of money and if you haven’t got your eyes on it, people take advantage.”
Earlier this year, Wiggins’ lawyer said the 44-year-old had had his converted barn repossessed while the tabloids claimed he was ‘sofa-surfing’ something which Wiggins slammed as sensationalism.
Wiggins said the situation he found himself in hadn’t ‘happened overnight’ and that the financial structures through which his businesses were constructed made him liable for losses beyond his knowledge.
He continued: “I was made bankrupt through a company. I had three companies – my image rights company that handles all my image rights, endorsement deals.
“So connected to that I joined XIX Entertainment, Simon Fuller, in 2014. And they set up various joint ventures with various clubs and companies, drinks suppliers, all different things, whatever endorsements.
“Off the bottom of that, the third company was a cycling team called New Cycling Limited, which was Team Wiggins, which was a team that was set up to facilitate the national track program, which was team pursuit, my last cycling career goal in Rio. That team should never have made a loss, it should never have made a profit, it was purely to pay the riders of the team, their wages and handle the budget.
“Now that that was done, as we see now through the lawyers, that was done purposefully. So, the top company would always take the hit if there was any trouble with the other ones. They should have been separate companies.”
Wiggins claimed that Team Wiggins had a budget of £650,000 which they overspent on which Wiggins ended up paying out of from the Wiggins Rights business.
Wiggins explained: “So there was a lot of money coming down from the top company to prop up these ventures that weren’t making any money,” he said, while also pinpointing management costs as a source of financial loss.
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“The top company took the biggest hits when it ran up a debt of nearly one and a half million, which got given to me as a director’s loan. But I wasn’t the director at the time, and I had to be made a director to take the loan without my knowledge. I was still riding my bike at the time.”
On top of that Wiggins revealed details of an employment case which saw him reclassified as an employee.
“When I started with Team Sky, as most cyclists, I was self-employed with an image rights company. Towards the end of my tenure with Team Sky, they were involved in a two-year case with HMRC for everyone who worked at Sky to fight whether they were deemed employed by Sky.
“I was acting as a witness for Sky in that case against HMRC and spent an enormous amount of money on legal fees because… if I was deemed employed, I’d have had to back pay taxes and National Insurance etc.
“In the end, I was deemed employed so I had to go back five years and pay all the taxes and every bits and bobs and pieces. And Sky knew that was happening from the day I signed with them.”
Despite the situation, Wiggins believes a positive solution will be reached but admits it will take time.
He said: “This will all come out in the wash over due process in the next few years. It’s just going to be a hell of a headache to get right.”
