Team Sky and Wiggins off hook as poor records stymie doping probe
● UKAD admits it is impossible to prove what was in disputed parcel
No charges will be brought over the doping investigation that cast a cloud over the reputation of British cycling and Bradley Wiggins, the former Tour de France champion and the country’s most decorated Olympian.
But Britain’s anti-doping agency did express concern yesterday that its investigation was hampered by the failure to retain accurate medical records in a sport that prided itself on meticulous precision planning as the country became an Olympic superpower.
The case centered on the contents of a medical package dispatched from the shared British Cycling-team Sky medical facility in Manchester to Wiggins at the 2011 Criterium du Dauphine race in France, a key pre-tour race. It was couriered by a British Cycling employee despite Wiggins competing for the Sky team in the race, a year before winning the Tour de France.
Details about the package were revealed last year by the Daily Mail newspaper and it took months for Team Sky to disclose the contents of the package, eventually telling a parliamentary hearing in London it contained Fluimucil, a brand name for a legal decongestant containing acetylcysteine used for clearing mucus.
But there is no paper trail or written evidence of the treatment and the UK Anti-doping Agency was investigating whether the substance was in fact the banned corticosteroid called triamcinolone. UKAD said yesterday that it “remains unable to confirm or refute the account that the package delivered to Team Sky contained Fluimucil.”
“Our investigation was hampered by a lack of accurate medical records being available at British Cycling,” UKAD chief executive Nicole Sapstead said. “This is a serious concern.”
Team Sky was established in 2009 by Dave Brailsford, the brains behind Britain’s 14 medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, with the target of producing the country’s first Tour winner – a feat accomplished by Wiggins in 2012. Team Sky’s Chris Froome, his former team-mate, has won it four times since.
Brailsford held dual roles with the British Cycling governing body and the team sponsored by Sky before stepping down from his performance director job at British Cycling in 2014.
A shared medical storage facility in Manchester is emblematic of the blurred lines between the two, supposedly separate entities, at the heart of the case that antidoping investigators and legislators tried to untangle.
British Cycling said it has implemented “significant changes” to its management of medical services to establish clearer boundaries. Making no reference to the failure to keep detailed medical records, Team Sky said: “We have cooperated fully with UK Antidoping over the last year.”
Wiggins, 37, yesterday broke his silence on the probe, branding it a “malicious witch hunt” that had been a “living hell” for his family.
In a statement posted on his social media pages, Wiggins criticised UKAD for not issuing an “unqualified finding of innocence” and said he will consider his legal options.
His statement added: “The amount of time it has taken to come to today’s conclusion has caused serious personal damage, especially as the investigation seems to be predicated on a news headline rather than real, solid information.”
Wiggins added that he spoke to UKAD for more than 90 minutes last November and handed over all relevant medical records in his possession. The agency, he claims, did not ask for any subsequent information.
“Our investigation was hampered by a lack of accurate medical records being available at British Cycling”
NICOLE SAPSTEAD (UKAD)