‘I loved my time at Sky – but they were not always ethical’
Michael Barry tells that the use of legal medication is placing the health of riders at undue risk
Michael Barry could be forgiven for feeling somewhat vindicated by the recent criticism of Team Sky’s ethics in the seasons that he rode for them. After all, two years ago, the team’s management effectively dismissed the Canadian cyclist as a liar when he said that Sir Dave Brailsford’s squad had raced unnecessarily on the painkiller Tramadol after he had joined them in 2010.
At the time Barry had no obvious reason to fabricate the claim, given that he was retired, far removed from the World Tour and not looking to rejoin it in any capacity. Still, with none of Barry’s former team-mates prepared to back him up, Sky were able to flatly deny the claim and return to racing with their reputation intact.
Now, of course, the landscape has dramatically changed. The UK Anti-Doping Agency is preparing to publish the conclusions of its investigation into Sky, a parliamentary select committee is unhappy with what Brailsford said about a medical package delivered to Sir Bradley Wiggins in 2011, and Wiggins has retired with critics questioning the justification for the Therapeutic Use Exemptions he was granted to treat asthma with a corticosteroid.
However, even if observers may be inclined to reconsider the truth of Barry’s testimony, he draws no satisfaction from the scrutiny now placed on his old employers.
Instead, the former superdomestique insists he still recalls his time on the team with great affection and has agreed to expand on what he describes as their “unethical” use of legal medication, only because he believes this points to a wider problem across cycling, one that is placing riders’ health at undue risk.
“What this has highlighted is not just a ‘doping’ issue,” the 41-yearold says, speaking from the family’s bike shop in Toronto, which he runs with his English father, Michael Snr, and wife Dede, also a former international cyclist. “It is a health issue. Taking care of athletes should be a team’s priority. Instead everyone involved has a ‘bias’ [agenda], from the mechanics to the team directeurs – everybody’s jobs are reliant on the athletes’ performances, so priorities are skewed, and people will do whatever they can to gain an edge, whether pharmaceutical or technological. But this wasn’t just a problem at Sky. It’s a problem for the sport in general.”
Sacked by Sky in 2012 after he confessed to his role in Lance Armstrong’s doping regime, Barry explained his concerns about Tramadol in his autobiography, which was published two years later. Barry felt that the use of it – by Sky and other teams – was leading to an increased number of crashes in the peloton. His suspicion was based on his own experience of its powerful sideeffects, which include drowsiness and dizziness.
In an interview to promote the book, he said that he had raced on it with Brailsford’s squad, but did not expand on the point. Today, however, he is prepared to admit that he expressed to the team’s management his concerns about their use of both Tramadol and sleeping pills, once he saw that younger riders were abusing them.
From bitter experience while riding with Armstrong, he knew that the soft, legal medication could serve as a gateway drug to more powerful, potentially illegal substances, especially among more vulnerable riders. He knew also that both substances were highly addictive and he had seen riders become dependent on them.
“The thing with doping is that there is a black and a white,” he says. ‘Did the team [Sky] cross into the black? No, in my opinion. They didn’t dope, but there is a grey area. The use of painkillers falls into that grey area. Tramadol falls into that grey area.
“I loved my time with the team. I had a great experience there. But, ethically, I really started questioning the use of the Tramadol, and the sleeping pills, especially when you see the younger riders using this stuff heavily.
“If we went into a medical clinic and just asked their GP, they probably wouldn’t give these out. And that is not ethical.”
After years of private torment while at US Postal, Barry privately committed to quit doping in 2006. As a result, when Brailsford approached Barry four years later with an offer to join his fledgling road squad, the prospect excited him because Brailsford had promised to pioneer clean racing.
When, in time, Barry relayed his concerns about the team’s ethical approach, he felt his thoughts were received sympathetically, and that changes were made to their working practices.
However, it suggests something important about the mindset of the medical staff at the time when Barry reveals now that the following extract from his book describes an exchange with a Sky doctor.
“I asked if one doctor would ever give the pill [Tramadol] to a patient under similar circumstances in an office setting. He said no. I asked if he was concerned about what would happen if a rider crashed and it was found he had a drug in his body which normally came with a warning that it should not be consumed while operating a vehicle. He was silent.
“I asked how he would feel if insurance wouldn’t cover a rider who had crashed with the drug in his system. He was silent. I asked how he would feel if that rider died. Silence, again. I suggested that the team should maintain an inventory of the drugs given out at each race and pass it along to the doctor at the next race. To my knowledge, that was never done.”
Barry will admit that he was surprised to discover that the team had transported medication across international boundaries to deliver the infamous Jiffy bag to Wiggins at the Critérium du Dauphiné in 2011. To his knowledge, this was not how they typically operated.
He cannot comment, however, on the claim that the bag contained only the decongestant Fluimucil. “They should have been clearer about it, so I’m not surprised by the scrutiny,” he says. “But the