HOW A DISASTROUS DAY FOR CYCLING UNFOLDED

2.18PM BRITISH CYCLING courier Simon Cope gets off to an awful start as he tells MPs: ‘If you asked me what I did last Tuesday, I couldn’t remember.’ He does remember what was written on the post-it note left on the package, however. 2.23PM COMMITTEE chairman Damian Collins tries to pin down Cope on his trip to France when his testimony contradicts details revealed in his expenses documents. ‘I might have been trying to fiddle my expenses claim. We all do that,’ he says. Questioner John Nicolson tweets: ‘Not a promising start to evidence.’ 2.33PM COPE, a former cyclist and coach, is asked whether he was an overqualified delivery boy. He replies: ‘The boss asked me to go and do something. I don’t question my boss. Why would I question the integrity of a governing body?’ 2.36PM COPE admits he must have misled airport staff who would have asked if he had packed his bags himself, because he did not know what was in the package. He confirms he delivered it to team doctor Richard Freeman. 3.06PM CHRIS MATHESON MP tells Cope: ‘You’ve been stitched up... left to dangle... do you feel that?’ Cope agrees. Nicolson tweets: ‘I’m left wondering whether I’d buy a used bike from Simon Cope and suspect the answer is no.’ 3.13PM UK ANTI-DOPING chief executive Nicole Sapstead (below) says there are no records of what was in the Jiffy bag. They asked 34 people and only Freeman offered an explanation. 3.17PM THEN this revelation: ‘Our r inquiries have established Dr Freeman kept medical records on a laptop. According to Team Sky policy — that other doctors followed — he was meant to upload the medical records to a Dropbox file that all doctors had access to. He did not do that. We had been informed his laptop had been stolen while he was on holiday in Greece (in 2014) and that’s why we’ve not been able to access those records.’ She expects that the General Medical Council will want to investigate Freeman’s actions. 3.26PM SAPSTEAD reveals that the allegation put to UKAD was that the package delivered to the Dauphine contained triamcinolone. They have not been able to clarify the explosive claim. She also claims British Cycling ordered far more triamcinolone than would be appropriate for one rider’s therapeutic use exemption (TUE). She says: ‘You would either think there was an excessive amount of it for one person or quite a few people had a similar problem.’ 3.41PM SAPSTEAD reveals UKAD have interviewed Sir Bradley Wiggins and that he said he was treated with Fluimucil on June 12, 2011, but does not know what was in the Jiffy bag. 3.56PM SAPSTEAD asks for the budget to be doubled if the issue is to be properly investigated. ‘I do not think the resources we have are sustainable,’ she says. Nicolson tweets that her evidence was ‘detailed and worrying’.