Wiggins: I was injected for allergy

SIR BRADLEY WIGGINS has defiantly stood by his ‘no needles’ pledge — despite being forced to admit that he had taken injections of a banned substance before big races.

The five-time Olympic champion’s claims were questioned after leaked World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) documents revealed he had been given three shots of a steroid medication, called triamcinolone.

Wiggins yesterday acknowledged he had taken the injections as part of an allergy treatment.

He has also denied that disgraced Belgian doctor Geert Leinders had any involvement in getting the green light for the cycling legend’s use of the substance.

Wiggins was forced to break his silence five days after it became clear he had legally used the drug — the same substance Lance Armstrong tested positive for at the 1999 Tour de France — before the 2011 and 2012 editions of the Tour and the 2013 Giro d’Italia.

That seemed to conflict with

comments he made in his 2012 autobiography that he strictly observed the sport’s ‘no needles’ policy — though in a statement yesterday he refused to concede it was an embarrassing climbdown.

‘Brad’s passing comment regarding needles in the 2012 book referred to the historic (illegal) practice of intravenous injections of performanceenhancing substances which was the subject of the 2011 UCI law change,’ a spokesman for Wiggins said in a statement.

‘The triamcinolone injection that is referred to in the WADA leaks is an intramuscular treatment for asthma, is fully approved by the sport’s governing bodies and Brad stands by his comment concerning the use of illegal intravenous needle injections.’