By . Martin Delgado . PUBLISHED: . 20:46 EST, 3 November 2012 . | . UPDATED: . 04:30 EST, 5 November 2012 . 'Bored': Bradley Wiggins has admitted he was once a 12-pints-a-day man - thanks to an unlikely obsession with Belgian beer. He is pictured with his wife Catherine . It is hard to imagine super-fit champion cyclist Bradley Wiggins having an alcohol problem. But the Tour de France winner says he was once a 12-pints-a-day man – thanks to an unlikely obsession with Belgian beer. The supremely disciplined athlete, who this year became the first Briton to win cycling’s toughest challenge, started drinking in his 20s. Short of money, despite having won three medals at the Athens Olympics, and bored sitting at home while his wife Cath was at work, he started a new hobby – collecting all 365 varieties of Belgian beer. In his new autobiography, to  be published this week, Wiggins recounts how he regularly set off for Brussels and returned home with a van-load of local brews. He would sit at home, admiring his collection, and then start drinking it. Before long he would be standing outside the pub, waiting for the doors to open, and by the end of the day he would often have consumed a dozen pints. ‘I was just bored s***less and didn’t know what to do,’ he told the Guardian yesterday. Disastrously for an athlete, he rapidly put on weight during his nine-month bender. ‘I got quite big. I was probably 83kg [just under 13 stone].’ He weighed in at 69kg (10st 8lb) for this year’s Tour de France. Wiggins is not the first prominent personality to admit to a drink problem in their youth, with Foreign Secretary William Hague boasting he used to drink 14  pints a day as a teenager. No longer a beer-drinker, Wiggins says the birth of his first child was the main reason  he returned to sobriety. The Olympic gold medallist, who earned an estimated £5 million this year, said: ‘We had a baby. So it was a case of, well, I’ve got to earn some f***ing money and the responsibility takes over.’ Historic: Bradley Wiggins, centre, is pictured after winning the Tour de France this year .
Short of money and bored sitting at home while his wife was at work Wiggins started a new hobby – collecting all 365 varieties .
of Belgian beer .
By . Martin Delgado . PUBLISHED: . 20:46 EST, 3 November 2012 . | . UPDATED: . 04:30 EST, 5 November 2012 . 'Bored': Bradley Wiggins has admitted he was once a 12-pints-a-day man - thanks to an unlikely obsession with Belgian beer. He is pictured with his wife Catherine . It is hard to imagine super-fit champion cyclist Bradley Wiggins having an alcohol problem. But the Tour de France winner says he was once a 12-pints-a-day man – thanks to an unlikely obsession with Belgian beer. The supremely disciplined athlete, who this year became the first Briton to win cycling’s toughest challenge, started drinking in his 20s. Short of money, despite having won three medals at the Athens Olympics, and bored sitting at home while his wife Cath was at work, he started a new hobby – collecting all 365 varieties of Belgian beer. In his new autobiography, to  be published this week, Wiggins recounts how he regularly set off for Brussels and returned home with a van-load of local brews. He would sit at home, admiring his collection, and then start drinking it. Before long he would be standing outside the pub, waiting for the doors to open, and by the end of the day he would often have consumed a dozen pints. ‘I was just bored s***less and didn’t know what to do,’ he told the Guardian yesterday. Disastrously for an athlete, he rapidly put on weight during his nine-month bender. ‘I got quite big. I was probably 83kg [just under 13 stone].’ He weighed in at 69kg (10st 8lb) for this year’s Tour de France. Wiggins is not the first prominent personality to admit to a drink problem in their youth, with Foreign Secretary William Hague boasting he used to drink 14  pints a day as a teenager. No longer a beer-drinker, Wiggins says the birth of his first child was the main reason  he returned to sobriety. The Olympic gold medallist, who earned an estimated £5 million this year, said: ‘We had a baby. So it was a case of, well, I’ve got to earn some f***ing money and the responsibility takes over.’ Historic: Bradley Wiggins, centre, is pictured after winning the Tour de France this year .
Olympics, and bored sitting at home while his wife Cath was at work, he started a new hobby – collecting all 365 varieties of Belgian beer. In