Drug storm Wiggins – I would have been treated better if I’d murdered someone
Cycling hero vows he’s ‘100 per cent’ innocent of cheating
SIR Bradley Wiggins insisted he was ‘100 per cent’ not a drugs cheat last night and claimed he would have been treated better if he had ‘murdered someone’.
As pressure mounted on the five-time Olympic gold medallist over explosive doping claims, he hit back, insisting he was the victim of a witch-hunt.
Yesterday Halfords, one of his major sponsors, announced it was reviewing its relationship with the star while one MP called on him to ‘justify’ his knighthood by proving his innocence.
But in a dramatic interview with the BBC, Sir Bradley, 37, said he had ‘never’ cheated and claimed the ‘malicious’ allegations were ‘someone trying to smear me’.
His spirited denial came hours after a bombshell report from MPs found he was given drugs to boost his performance before winning the 2012 Tour de France.
The Commons digital, culture, media and sport committee, which had been investigating doping in sport before it took on the Wiggins case, rejected claims he had taken triamcinolone to treat his asthma – saying it was actually used to ‘prepare’ the Team Sky rider for the race.
The MPs said Sir Bradley and Team Sky ‘crossed an ethical line’ by using drugs that are allowed under anti-doping rules but only for medical purposes.
Speaking to the BBC, Sir Bradley claimed he was the victim of a malicious smear.
Asked if he did not cheat, he replied: ‘ 100 per cent. Never, throughout my career.
‘I have worked and had the passion I have had for 15 to 20 years and to do that to the sport...it is the worst thing to be accused of.
‘It is also the hardest thing to prove you haven’t done,’ he said. ‘We’re not dealing in a legal system. I’d have had more rights if I had murdered someone.’
Sir Bradley added: ‘ Not at any time in my career did we cross the ethical line. I refute that 100 per cent.’ He denied the claim he had used the drug nine times, saying: ‘This is malicious, this is someone trying to smear me.’
He reacted angrily to the confidential source quoted in the MPs’ report who claimed Sir Bradley trained separately from the rest of the team in preparation for the 2012 season.
He said he was the subject of a ‘witch hunt’ and that his children ‘get a hammering at school’ which is ‘disgusting to witness’. He said he was enduring ‘ a living hell’, adding: ‘I don’t know what his [the source’s] motivation is. It was completely under medical need. I am having to deal with the fall- out; I am left in the middle trying to pick up the pieces.’
Sir Bradley said the report was ‘based on rumour’, adding: ‘Who are these sources? Come out. Go on record. This is serious stuff.’
The MPs’ report stated the commitee was ‘not in a position’ to determine what was in the ‘jiffy bag’ delivered to Sir Bradley before a race in 2011.
But it added there was no ‘reliable evidence’ to back up Team Sky’s claim that the medical package contained a legal decongestant. Asked what was in the bag, Sir Bradley replied: ‘God knows. Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t run the team, I was busy doing my job that I was paid to do. I didn’t even know there was a package until I was asked about it. It has become such a mess, it is ludicrous.’
Yesterday former Olympic athlete Roger Black said: ‘Sir Bradley needs a right to reply, but he needs to reply absolutely seriously and prove his innocence.
‘I won an Olympic silver medal – I didn’t take drugs. There’ll be people out there who say you cannot win an Olympic medal without taking drugs. I know that’s not true. But there’ll always be suspicion.
‘Bradley will claim that they were for medical reasons. He’s saying one thing, the MPs are saying another thing. He has to prove his innocence.’
Olympic track cycling gold medallist Victoria Pendleton backed her former teammate, saying she would ‘like to believe its not true’.
Last night Le Col, the British cycling brand which is working with Sir Bradley to produce his own range of cycling wear, said it was ‘ totally committed’ to him despite the report. But last night cycling firm Halfords said it was ‘ in discussions with his management team regarding this latest report’ and one MP called on him to ‘ justify’ his knighthood. Labour’s John Mann said: ‘Sir Bradley Wiggins needs to justify why he should keep his knighthood and his sponsorship deals by now proving his innocence.’
The MPs’ report sent shockwaves through British cycling and dealt a massive blow to the reputation of Sir Bradley, who became the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France just a week before the London Olympics.
ON SUNDAY we heard the sad news that Sir Roger Bannister, the first man to run a sub four-minute mile, had passed away.
Sir Roger’s life was truly a model for how sportsmen and women should conduct themselves. Indeed, we should all follow his example of honesty, decency, self- effacement and public service.
He never cheated. He never lied. He never made a penny out of his sport.
Sir Roger came from that magnificent post-war generation which could be relied on to serve others and do the right thing.
What a haunting irony that news of his death should have come through just hours before another sporting knight, Sir Bradley Wiggins, was condemned by MPs who allege he was given drugs which may have enhanced his performance as a top-level cyclist.
Wiggins — who denies he is a drugs cheat and says he is a victim of a smear campaign — was the first Briton to win the Tour de France, in 2012.
Tough
How we all marvelled at the time that a Brit had taken on the French at their national sport and emerged victorious. But how devastating to learn that he stands accused of using asthma medication which may have improved his chances of winning.
Let’s compare and contrast Sir Bradley and Sir Roger. They have both been lauded as true British heroes — but now the peculiar coincidence of this week’s news stories has cast them in a very different light.
One was the supreme amateur sportsman, the other a man who, despite his denials, could be condemned by posterity as a professional cheat.
Half a century divides the two — and an entire moral universe. In the difference between them we can detect so much that has changed — and not for the better — in modern Britain.
There’s no question that Bradley Wiggins was an extraordinary sportsman, with real guts and motivation. He came up the hard way from a tough London childhood, and it’s worth remembering that he is far from the only sportsman in the hugely competitive world of professional cycling to stand accused of resorting to subterfuge to gain an advantage.
For him, it seems, winning was all that mattered.
And let’s not fool ourselves that the sport of cycling is unique. Modern British sport is full of competitors who are, in some ways, just as questionable as Sir Bradley Wiggins and the Sky team he rode for.
Remember that the centre forward who dives in the penalty box to fool the referee into giving a penalty he doesn’t deserve is setting a dreadful example for the millions of young sports fans who worship him.
The top-class cricketer, who would rather make easy money in glitzy T20 cricket than represent his country in the grind of a Test match, sends out a cynical message about the priorities that drive so much modern sport.
These kinds of behaviour were utterly unthinkable to the men and women of Roger Bannister’s generation. And sadly we are talking about a modern moral sickness which goes far deeper than merely sport.
I’m a political correspondent and can testify that the same culture of amorality which threatens to ruin British sport has also captured British politics.
Today’s generation of politicians cynically tell lies, cheat on their expenses and break the rules to win elections. They, too, send out the broader message that the ends justify the means in the cut-throat modern world.
Such behaviour in the corridors of power — the same corridors of power from which the Iraq War was launched on a falsehood in 2003 — bears poor comparison with the political giants of the past who put Britain’s interests above all else.
This was brought home to us yesterday morning when we woke to hear that Gary Oldman had won an Oscar for his vivid portrayal of Winston Churchill in Britain’s darkest hour, when we stood alone against Hitler and German fascism in 1940.
Churchill was again prime minister in 1954 when Bannister ran his sub four-minute mile. What were the qualities which led him to lead the fight against fascism 70 years ago? It was bloody-minded principle and patriotism. Inexhaustible honesty.
Throughout Churchill’s 60-year career, he always acted politically because he believed what he was doing was right. He was never afraid to be unpopular or stand alone.
Short-term political advantage was the last thing in his mind.
Churchill would have been utterly baffled by the dark arts of modern- day politicians, who won’t lift a finger or utter a word until focus groups and opinion polls have reassured them that they’re on the winning side.
And Churchill would have no more put up with modern spin doctors than Sir Roger Bannister would have endured for a second the secretive and now highly suspicious methods apparently employed by Team Sky in the preparation of their champion.
Venal
Is not Sky boss Sir David Brailsford the equivalent of today’s political spin doctors in the way he has sought to dissemble over the contents of a Jiffy bag delivered to Bradley Wiggins at a race on the Continent?
Ten years ago, I fulfilled a dream and wrote the biography of my childhood sporting hero, the extraordinary cricketer Basil D’Oliveira, who as a ‘coloured’ South African was unable to play for his native country.
Basil was forced to come to England where, through his hard work and raw talent he forced his way into our national Test team.
He then found himself involved in a venal web of bribery, intrigue and political pressure as South African prime minister John Vorster set to work preventing D’Oliveira’s selection in the team to tour South Africa.
Vorster knew that if ‘ Dolly’ was chosen, his selection would send out the message that Apartheid was an evil system.
From where did D’Oliveira get the bottomless integrity which enabled him to turn down those bribes, and thus change the course of history? A fundamental inner decency, is the answer.
But Basil D’Oliveira came from a different generation. We are talking of an age when Bobby Moore was the captain of the England team that won the 1966 World Cup.
Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton and the rest of those immortals played above all for the love of the game and pure patriotism in an age when footballers were lucky to earn a hundred pounds a week.
Money
Today, a hundred thousand pounds a week is commonplace, and brilliant sportsmen are taught that it’s normal and OK to cheat.
You might dismiss the stories about Bradley Wiggins as being something for the back pages of the newspapers. But you would be wrong.
For I believe that sport tells us something deep about the country where it is played.
Those joyful Brazilian football teams have always reflected the exuberant and carefree qualities of Brazil itself. Likewise, the joyless athletes of Cold War Russia and eastern Europe, with their industrial-scale doping, told us everything we needed to know about Communism.
There was an innocence and a joy about Sir Roger Bannister’s sporting success. He did his running for love of athletics and not to make money.
That’s why he quit athletics at the height of his sporting prowess in order to go on to a distinguished career as a neurologist at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, and master of Pembroke College, Oxford.
In stark contrast, the devastating questions which now hang over Bradley Wiggins’s sporting triumphs surely say much about a society in which something has gone very wrong indeed.