Dr Richard Freeman admits third data loss after UCI request over bloods
Team Sky and British Cycling’s former doctor Richard Freeman admitted losing medical information from a third computer after the UCI requested blood data from riders at the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France in 2011.
Freeman has previously told the medical tribunal that a Team Sky laptop containing medical records was stolen from him in Greece in 2014, while last week he also admitted to smashing up another laptop to prevent “Indian hackers” from accessing data.
On Freeman’s sixth day of evidence at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in Manchester, Simon Jackson QC, counsel for the General Medical Council, read out an email the doctor had sent to cycling’s body, the UCI, in which Freeman said in 2011: “I lost my hard drive and much data with regards to monitoring of bloods of riders at the giro and tdf. All are normal and will forward once fresh hard copies have come from the hospital.”
Jackson then asked Freeman: “This seems to be an unfortunate third occasion when you’ve either lost or broken a hard drive. So what happened?” “I can’t remember this email but having read it now I believe it was in reference to access. I didn’t lose a hard drive in 2011,” replied Freeman.
“If you’d lost access surely you would have said I am unable to access data,” asked Jackson. “You wouldn’t say I’ve lost it, or am I being pedantic?”
“I don’t think you are being pedantic,” replied Freeman.
Earlier Freeman, who has admitted 18 of the 22 charges against him in his fitness to practice tribunal – including ordering banned testosterone – denied that he had become a “poacher turned gamekeeper” having learned after moving into cycling about how some riders micro-dosed with testosterone and EPO.
“I’d like to think I’m more the gamekeeper of Team Sky,” he said. “Yes, I’d want to know more about testing and EPO. It was a sharp, steep learning
curve at Team Sky. That was as a gamekeeper. I can’t comment as a poacher because I never considered myself a poacher.”
Dr Freeman claimed he knew so little of cycling and its high-profile doping issues when he came into the job that the Floyd Landis scandal passed him by. “Someone said: ‘For God’s sake, what are you getting involved in cycling for?’ I said: ‘It’s a challenge and it’s been offered.’ I hadn’t realised how many landmines were out there.”
The tribunal continues.