There is a cloud over our sport …we need the truth
WIGGINS SAYS GB RIDERS WERE N0T DOPING BUT DEMANDS NEW PROBE
SIR BRADLEY WIGGINS has called for a new investigation into the British Cycling doctor who ordered testosterone – but he believes it was not for doping an elite athlete.
And Britain’s first winner of the Tour de France raged: “What exactly happened? Someone must know.”
Wiggins, also a five-time Olympic champion, broke his silence on the damning verdict of a medical tribunal that saw cycling plunged into crisis.
A two-year hearing concluded Dr Richard Freeman – who was Wiggins’s chief medical consultant on the road with Team Sky and at British Cycling – ordered a batch of banned Testogel sachets “knowing or believing” they were intended to help an unnamed rider’s performance.
Dr Freeman claimed it was to treat former performance director Shane Sutton for erectile dysfunction – an assertion the Australian vehemently denied and which the tribunal rejected.
But it led to a blizzard of questions about who the drug was for, and who knew about the rogue order.
The swirl of innuendo and finger-pointing has left a question mark over a golden generation of British cyclists.
Dr Freeman was also a key witness in the controversy surrounding the delivery of a jiffy bag for Wiggins after the
Criterium du Dauphine 10 years ago, and the TUE (therapeutic use exemption) sick notes allowing him to be treated with banned asthma drug triamcinolone before three Grand Tours.
Wiggins said on his Eurosport podcast: “This whole charge that they [the Testogel sachets] were for a rider, I don’t think anyone was in that game for doing s*** like that, or stupid enough.The amount of times you were tested, you’d get caught.
“What exactly happened? Someone must know. ‘Oh s***, accidentally a load of testosterone gel’s come in’. You’re jeopardising your duty of care towards athletes, people’s kids, husbands and wives – people who are in there, in this great British system which has won all these Olympic medals, funded by public money. That is not good enough.”
Dr Freeman faces two further UK Anti-Doping charges regarding the Testogel. British Cycling and Ineos Grenadiers -– formerly Team Sky – have said they will cooperate with that investigation.
Wiggins added: “There needs to be more of an explanation. Who were they for then? What the bloody hell were they for? I don’t think for one minute they were for any rider. That wasn’t the type of system that was run.
“Of course, that leaves this cloud, I understand that and it makes a bloody good story as well. But this one is a bit different.
“There’s something else going on and someone knows something, and I don’t quite know what the hell is going on. But it needs a follow-up now. There should be another investigation and I think that’s probably the best way to do it.”
The tribunal resumes in Manchester
tomorrow.