Sir Bradley Wiggins’s bankruptcy has been followed by a doubling of the claims against his estate to almost £2 million, according to a report by his company’s liquidator.
The former cyclist was declared bankrupt this summer, four years after entering into an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) to settle debts that included more than £300,000 to HM Revenue and Customs.
Documents filed with Companies House by auditing firm MHA prior to his bankruptcy stated that he was facing claims of almost £1million via his image rights firm, Wiggins Rights Ltd.
A progress report by MHA’s Georgina Eason for the period ending September 14, which was filed this month, reads: “During the period under review, the directors IVA has been terminated, and a bankruptcy petition has been granted. I have submitted the company’s increased claim in the bankruptcy proceedings to the sum of £1,976,157.73.
“I have identified that the company holds the legal title to a small number of trademarks. During the period under review, my agents have identified an interested party and are presently seeking to discuss a proposed sale.”
Those trademarks were said to include “Bradley Wiggins”, “Wiggins”, and “Wiggo”.
Wiggins’s bankruptcy sparked fears that Britain’s first Tour de France winner would be forced to sell all of his Olympic medals, as well as the other trophies and memorabilia he accrued over the course of his career.
The latest liquidator report was produced a month after Wiggins told Lance Armstrong’s podcast he “should have paid more attention” to his financial affairs while he was riding.
He added: “I’m in this situation now but because of the mess that’s been created. It has been rumbling on for quite a few years now, this hasn’t just happened overnight.”
‘He doesn’t have an address. It is a total mess’
Wiggins had told Cycling Weekly the previous year that his financial difficulties were “a very historical matter that involves professional negligence from [others] that has left a s—pile with my name at the front of it to deal with”.
He added: “[It] happens to a lot of sportsmen while they’re doing the grafting and on that there’ll be a number of legal claims from my lawyers left, right and centre as a result.”
That followed the repossession of his Lancashire home, which was put up for sale for almost £1 million.
Alan Sellers, his lawyer, said following the bankruptcy: “He has lost absolutely everything. He doesn’t have a penny.
“It’s a very sad state of affairs. 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.”
Fall from grace after London 2012
Wiggins, 44, who retired in 2016 having won eight Olympic medals, five of them gold, became the first British rider to win the Tour in 2012. He went on to open the London Games that summer, famously ringing the bell to signal the start of an opening ceremony that was beamed out to a global audience of hundreds of millions.
He won the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year trophy later that year, and was knighted in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to cycling.
A cult figure, much of the shine was taken off Wiggins’s career after he retired in 2016, when a Russian hackers group leaked medical information pertaining to scores of high-profile athletes, Wiggins among them.
Wiggins’s use of therapeutic use exemptions – drugs used to treat medical conditions, which would otherwise be banned – before some of the biggest races in his career was considered by MPs to have crossed an ethical line. He always denied cheating, insisting the drugs were to treat pollen allergies.
Wiggins has spoken movingly in recent years of his struggles with depression, with fame, and with the break-up of his marriage to his wife Cath, with whom he has two children, Ben and Bella.
He revealed many of his issues stemmed from his difficult relationship with his own father, Gary, a former professional track cyclist who abandoned Wiggins as a child and was found beaten to death in a town in New South Wales in 2008.
Last year, Wiggins also revealed that he had been sexually abused by a coach when he was a young up-and-coming athlete.
