Team Sky ‘broke ban on needles’
TEAM SKY are being investigated by UK anti-doping authorities over an allegation they injected some riders in breach of cycling’s ‘no-needles’ policy.
A Team Sky insider has claimed riders were injected with Fluimucil and other substances to aid recovery even after the UCI, cycling’s world governing body, introduced a ban in 2011 on the use of needles at races.
The insider, who Sportsmail understands to be a former Team Sky employee, has contacted the UK Anti-Doping Agency (UKAD) and a parliamentary select committee to claim the team took a ‘tactical’ approach to the use of medical exemptions (TUEs).
Only last month team principal Sir Dave Brailsford insisted ‘there would be no whistleblowers’ from within the professional cycling team.
But this latest allegation is the third time a whistleblower has come forward with allegations. One originally contacted this newspaper to reveal the story of the medical Jiffy Bag couriered to the French Alps for Sir Bradley Wiggins in June 2011.
Last month, former Team Sky rider Josh Edmondson accused his old bosses of a cover-up after failing to report him for a breach of the ‘no-needles’ policy.
Now the former member of staff has sent an anonymous email to select committee chairman Damian Collins MP and given evidence in person to UKAD investigators.
In the email, which has been passed to Sportsmail, there is a request to look more closely ‘at the medical team at Sky and the ethics within the team’.
The insider would almost certainly have not been part of the inner sanctum involved in the decision to use the medical exemption system to give Wiggins the banned corticosteroid, Triamcinolone, before the 2012 Tour de France he won and two other major races.
For that reason the same insider would not have been aware if the Jiffy Bag contained Triamcinolone, an allegation also being investigated by UKAD.
But in the email the insider states: ‘The controversy of the Jiffy Bag at the end of the 2011 Dauphine is simple. This was just after the needles ban came in place. It was stated that individuals, including doctors, being caught at cycle races with injectable equipment could face up to a five-year prison sentence.’
Team Sky have not yet had a chance to formally answer the whistleblower’s allegations.
Both Wiggins and Team Sky maintain there has been no wrongdoing, with Wiggins insisting his use of a drug with a history of abuse in cycling was to combat severe allergy symptoms.
The latest whistleblower also writes about Team Sky riders complaining at the end of a disappointing first season, in 2010, that their doctors did not offer intravenous recovery methods.
This, said the insider, was then addressed by the hiring of Italian doctor Fabio Bartalucci and the now disgraced Dr Geert Leinders. Bartalucci was said to be an expert in intravenous recovery who then left the team soon after the needles ban was introduced.
The email also claims medical exemptions were used ‘tactically’ by Team Sky ‘to support the health of a rider with an ultimate aim of supporting performance’. It reads: ‘Using TUEs was openly discussed in hushed voices.’
The email states that Richard Freeman, the British Cycling team doctor and ex-Team Sky medic who has been unable to provide evidence to support his claim that the Wiggins Jiffy Bag contained Flumuicil, remains a fan of intravenous recovery methods. While it is not banned out of competition, the email says ‘the ethics are very questionable’.
Yesterday a statement issued by Team Sky to the Press Association said: ‘It is right that any concerns are reported to and dealt with by the appropriate authorities and we will continue to co-operate with them.’