Defiant Wiggins insists he is clean
BRADLEY WIGGINS has managed to further muddy the waters in his first interview since hackers revealed he had been allowed to use a banned drug during competition.
The first Briton to win the Tour de France has been under immense pressure to speak after the Russian hackers revealed he had three Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs) for injections of a powerful corticosteroid, triamcinolone, before his last two Tours and the Giro d’Italia in 2013.
However, his explanation in a televised interview to be broadcast this morning seems alarmingly inconsistent with his account of the build-up to his 2012 Tour triumph in his autobiog- raphy. And yesterday Tom Dumoulin, who was beaten to the world time trial title by Wiggins in 2014, broke ranks to say the situation around the British rider ‘stinks’.
Explaining why he needed the drug for asthma ahead of his historic Tour victory, Wiggins told the BBC’s Andrew Marr: ‘I really struggled in that period. June-July is the worst period for that. April, June, July, right through those months, and I was
having problems. When you win the race three weeks out from the Tour de France, as I did on the Dauphine Libere, you’re the favourite for the Tour.
‘You have the medical team there; the coaches checking everything, saying: “Bradley you’re on track here, you’re the favourite to win, is there anything we can help with?”
‘[I reply] “Well, I was still struggling with this breathing last week. I know it didn’t look like it but is there anything else you can do just to make sure that this doesn’t become an issue into a three-week race”.’
In his 2012 autobiography, My Time — a book where he makes no mention of the life-long asthma problems he insists he has suffered with — Wiggins gives a rather different account of his health that year.
‘I had been close to my best in the Dauphine,’ he writes. ‘In the three weeks before I travelled to start the Tour it was just a case of sustaining the form, dropping a tiny bit more weight, backing up a bit in training. Clearly I was in the ballpark ... I was very confident.
‘I felt relaxed and business-like. That sense I had that things were going my way was reinforced the moment I landed in Belgium. I’d done all the work, I was fine-tuned. I was ready to go. My body was in good shape. I’m in the form of my life. I was only ill once or twice with minor colds, and I barely lost a day’s training from it.’
A number of medical experts, as well as a doctor from his former team, have questioned why Wiggins would need such a strong drug when inhalers should be able to manage the symptoms listed on the TUE forms leaked by the group of hackers calling themselves Fancy Bears.
Wiggins declined to face questions from sports journalists who have a level of expertise in doping, preferring instead to speak to Marr. But despite being given a relatively easy ride he appears less than convincing in some of his responses.
He suggested the confusion that surrounded the claim in his book that he had never used needles — he was given triamcinolone via intramuscular injections — was caused by his ghost writer and that particular claim went unchallenged.
Challenged by Marr on the no-needles claim, Wiggins replied: ‘I wasn’t writing the book, I was writing it with a cycling journalist who’s very knowledgeable on the sport and had lived through Lance Armstrong and the doping era. All the questions at that time were loaded towards doping.’
Wiggins insisted he had done nothing wrong and Team Sky, his team at the time, have maintained that their TUE applications complied with the rules.
‘I’ve been very clear in the past and have been very transparent to the governing bodies, the World Anti-Doping Agency, the UCI. I’ve been put in a position this week where I have to come out and explain, and I’m glad that I’m able to have my say and clarify a few points.’
The 36-year-old fivetime Olympic champion said the triamcinolone ‘was prescribed for allergies and respiratory problems’. He added: ‘I’ve been a lifelong sufferer of asthma. I went to my team doctor at the time and we went in turn to a specialist to see if there’s anything else we could do to cure these problems. And he said: “Yeah, there’s something you can do but you’re going to need authorisation from your governing body.”
‘You have to show and provide evidence from a specialist that they will then scrutinise with three independent doctors and authorise you to take this product. If one of those three doctors says no, you get declined. Once I have a certificate from the World AntiDoping Agency and the sport’s governing body, only then do you take the medication.’
The UCI have been reluctant to engage in dialogue about the Wiggins case but at the time of his TUEs not all applications went to the three-man panel. Some cases could be approved by the UCI’s in-house doctor, Mario Zorzoli, whose name is on Wiggins’ TUE forms. The UCI would not confirm if the Wiggins case went before a panel.
Marr asked Wiggins if he believed triamcinolone was performance enhancing. Convicted dopers such as Michael Rasmussen have said it assists with weight loss, which can be hugely beneficial to a Grand Tour rider, and has anti-inflammatory qualities that lessen fatigue and speed up recovery.
Wiggins argued that drug cheats would have used larger quantities than the 40mg dose he received. One former doper who used the drug told The Mail On Sunday this week that he thought 40mg was actually quite a large dose. Wiggins said: ‘It was to cure a med- ical condition. This was about putting myself back on a level playing field to compete at the highest level. I can understand the [cynicism]. It’s still an open wound in our sport and this particular drug was abused back in that era.
‘We have legislation from cycling’s governing body and the World Anti-doping Agency. As athletes we don’t invent those rules, we have to abide by them and everything done by Team Sky has 100 per cent abided by the rules that are set for us.’
Dumoulin nevertheless said it was ‘strange’ that Wiggins had received the injections immediately before three Grand Tours.
‘And injecting?’ said the Dutch Olympic silver medallist. ‘So then you have very bad asthma. It’s not something they do with normal asthmatics, let alone athletes who only have exercise-induced asthma. Apparently Wiggins’ injection worked for weeks — so in my opinion you should be out of competition for weeks. It stinks.’
Asked if he would apply for a TUE because technically, within the rules, he could get access to a banned substance, Dumoulin replied: ‘No, that’s cheating? I have never applied for a certificate. I once used an inhaler but I did not need permission.’ • The Andrew Marr Show is on BBC1 today at 9am