Jiffy bag doc too ill for hearing
Jiffy bag doctor pulls out of hearing
SIR BRADLEY Wiggins’ doctor sensationally withdrew from a parliamentary hearing 24 hours before he was due to give evidence on the Team Sky jiffy bag.
Dr Richard Freeman told the clerk of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport select committee that he was unable to appear before MPs today because of ill health. He also declined an invitation, Sportsmail understands, to give evidence via video link.
But the timing of his withdrawal will cause further discomfort to Wiggins, Team Sky and British Cycling when so many questions remain about the transportation of a medical package to a race in the French Alps in June 2011 for the first British winner of the Tour de France.
UK Anti- Doping chief executive Nicole Sapstead is also due to appear before MPs today and she is expected to confirm that both British Cycling and Team Sky have been unable to provide documents to support evidence given by Sir Dave Brailsford in December.
Brailsford told the committee that Freeman had informed him the package delivered for Wiggins contained a legal decongestant called Fluimucil.
The medicine is not available in the UK but could have been sourced locally in France to treat Wiggins for what his former coach, Shane Sutton, told MPs was an illness he developed towards the end of the seven- stage Criterium du Dauphine.
The package was collected in Manchester on June 8 by British Cycling coach Simon Cope. Cope, who will also face questions in parliament today, did not arrive in La Toussuire in France until June 12.
Brailsford and British Cycling president Bob Howden — who has since stood down as chairman — both agreed with MPs that there should be a record of the medical package being transported to France.
Select committee chairman Damian Collins has since said: ‘ People’s faith will be challenged if there are no records. How do you know if you’re running the cleanest team in cycling if you don’t have records to show what the doctors are giving the cyclists?
‘If they don’t keep those records as a matter of course, how do they police the rules that they set themselves?’ Only Freeman, Wiggins and the British Cycling physiotherapist who wrapped the medical package can know for certain what was in the Jiffy bag and Freeman might have been in a position to clarify matters when Brailsford and Wiggins are under such intense scrutiny.
The Jiffy bag controversy is only one element of the storm that has engulfed Wiggins since it emerged in September that he had a medical exemption to use a banned corticosteroid before the 2012 Tour and two other major races.
As the doctor so closely associated with Wiggins, Freeman is also under enormous pressure. Only last month Freeman had to allow UKAD investigators into his office at the National Cycling Centre in Manchester, with officials understood to have been there until 1am.
Wiggins, Team Sky and British Cycling deny any breach of anti- doping rules but an investigation into allegations of wrongdoing is ongoing.
Based on how today’s hearing goes, the select committee may send written questions to Freeman or ask him to appear at a later date.