Strip Sir Bradley of Tour title, says drug cheat Landis
sIR BRADLEY WIGGIns was facing calls to be stripped of his 2012 tour de France title last night, with disgraced cyclist Floyd Landis also suggesting team sky cannot survive the damning parliamentary report published this week. Wiggins might dismiss Landis as a former doper with an axe to grind, but the man who was erased as the winner of the 2006 tour after failing a drugs test does at least know his subject. the same could be said of Michael Rasmussen, who was removed from the 2007 tour for a previous dope violation when he was leading the race. He too has had his say on the Wigginsteam sky controversy, making some explosive observations. A committee of MPs has accused Wiggins of taking a corticosteroid to enhance his performance prior to winning the 2012 tour, while also stating sir Dave Brailsford and team sky crossed an ethical line when it came to obtaining medical exemptions to give such substances to riders. Wiggins has denied cheating and maintains he required the steroid to treat asthma and
pollen allergies. Team Sky refute claims that their riders used medication to enhance performance. But Landis, now the central figure in the federal whistleblower case against Lance Armstrong in America, has spoken out, echoing the view of MPs that Wiggins’s use of triamcinolone was to help him lose weight and so increase his power on the bike. The American told Cycling News: ‘I don’t know why, in the report, they said there was no doping violation. For me, it absolutely falls into that category. They used it for performance enhancement and there’s no ambiguity. Wiggins should lose his Tour title. I can’t see how the sport authorities can let it slide. ‘The World Anti-Doping Agency have no choice but to suspend him and take his title away. If they were legitimate, that’s what they’d do. For a guy like Wiggins, who was too heavy and not a climber, corticoids would be just as beneficial as steroids, EPO and blood doping, because if he didn’t use it then he wouldn’t have been able to get that skinny, and all the EPO in the world wouldn’t have got him over the mountains. ‘People shouldn’t downplay what has gone on. He was using steroids. They kicked me out and they took my title for that. They’d better f*****g take his.’ Team Sky boss Brailsford continues to retain the backing of his employers but Landis sees a bleak future for the road team who have won the Tour for five of the last six years. ‘This has to be the end of the team,’ he said. ‘I’m 100 per cent sure there will not be a Sky team at the Tour this year. No one with more than two brain cells would add it all up and conclude it was all just coincidental.’ Rasmussen gave his view on the power of triamcinolone, which has a long history of abuse in cycling. ‘It is a top-shelf drug — it’s a very effective drug if you want to ride your bike faster,’ he told The Evening Standard. ‘It makes you feel stronger, you get leaner and it helps with fatigue. ‘Sky can only try to re-establish a little trust. They can do that by letting Dave Brailsford go. He’s too much part of the problem.’ UK Anti-Doping are demanding compensation because poor record-keeping hampered their Jiffy bag investigation. A UKAD probe was unable to establish what was in the package delivered to Wiggins in June 2011. The parliamentary report recommended the agency be reimbursed by Team Sky and British Cycling ‘to cover the costs of an investigation that was made longer and harder by their failure to keep proper records’. The anti-doping agency are understood to have spent more than £42,000 on legal costs and expended more than 1,000 man hours on the inquiry. lSKODA,
one of Wiggins’s main personal sponsors, have refused to publicly back the under-fire star. The Czech car maker agreed a seven-figure deal with Wiggins in January 2017, but twice declined to offer their continued support when contacted by Sportsmail in light of the damaging allegations.