Bradley Wiggins declared bankrupt - reports

Sir Bradley Wiggins has entered bankruptcy, according to a report in The Times on Saturday, after going through financial difficulties with his company.

The former Tour de France champion, who retired in 2016 after a career which saw him win eight Olympic medals, entered an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA), a financial agreement designed to help people pay off creditors and avoid bankruptcy, in 2022. Cycling Weekly revealed in 2022 that his liquidated company owed nearly £1 million to creditors. He is understood to have failed his IVA in January this year.

Wiggins Rights Limited, the company that ran much of Bradley Wiggins’s affairs during his career and which was the parent of the now defunct Team Wiggins, entered liquidation in September 2020. In November last year, liquidators revealed they have yet to be paid any of the £979,953 they claimed from Wiggins in 2022 in part to pay off an outstanding director's loan. Wiggins has previously said he disputes the claim.

In December 2020, not long after his companies entered liquidation, a spokesperson said that Wiggins’s involvement in the companies was "not day to day," and that "this in no way affects Bradley's personal solvency."

According to The Times, Wiggins was declared bankrupt at Lancaster County Court on June 3. Trustees will now be appointed to seize and dispose of Wiggins' remaining assets. 

In the liquidators' report dated 19 September 2023, they said: "Unfortunately the joint supervisor has informed creditors… if the breach is not remedied then the IVA may be terminated. In the event the IVA is terminated the director may become subject to bankruptcy proceedings and this would potentially substantially increase the expected timeframe for recovery of the outstanding directors loan account."

They added: "I expect that the termination of the IVA should be confirmed within the next few months."

When asked for comment in November last year, Wiggins told Cycling Weekly his financial woes had "gone on for a few years now with no apparent end in sight".

He added: "It’s a very historical matter that involves professional negligence from  [others] that has left a s**t pile with my name at the front of it to deal with!

"[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 center as a result."

He added that his legal representatives had experienced "a fair amount of difficulty" in accessing documents.

Wiggins was contacted for comment.