WIGGINS: WE NEED THE TRUTH OVER TESTOGEL ORDER

.. but former Tour de France winner does not believe sachets were meant for a rider

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 nine years ago (right)raged: “What exactly happened? Someone must know.”

Wiggins, also a five-times Olympic champion, broke his silence on the damning verdict of a medical tribunal which plunged cycling into crisis.

A two-year hearing concluded Dr Richard Freeman (above), 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 guru denied and which the tribunal rejected. But it led to questions about who the drug was for, and who else knew about the rogue order. 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) sicknotes allowing him to be treated with banned asthma drug triamcinolone before three Grand Tours.

Speaking on his Eurosport podcast, Wiggins said: “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. You’d get caught, the amount of times you were tested.

“What exactly happened? Someone must know. ‘Oh s***, accidentally a load of testosterone gel’s come in.’ People who are in there, in this great British system which has won all these Olympic medals over the years, funded by public money – that is not good enough.”

Dr Freeman faces two further UK AntiDoping 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. There is something else going on and someone knows something. “There should be another investigation, that’s the best way to do it.”

The tribunal resumes in Manchester tomorrow.