Team Sky’s protestations will be falling on deaf ears
● Sky team cyclists accused of using asthma drug to maintain power
The severed heads of those cycling knights, Sir Bradley Wiggins and Sir Dave Brailsford, are paraded virtually outside the Houses of Parliament, skewered by a Government report that leaves them with nowhere to ride.
The conclusions of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee in its “Combating Doping In Sport” inquiry have no legal force but they arrive at the point of a moral spear so sharp the wounds might be considered terminal.
The pristine Team Sky ethos propagated by Brailsford is shown to be one more victim of an insatiable desire for success that drove them the wrong side of the ethical line on which the project was predicated.
The report makes clear that, though Team Sky acted within the regulations as defined by the World Anti Doping Agency, medical treatments that would otherwise be banned were used, in the committee’s view, to enhance performance and not to treat a condition.
Team Sky and Sir Bradley vehemently disagree, of course. “I find it so sad that accusations can be made, where people can be accused of things they have never done which are then regarded as facts. I strongly refute the claim that any drug was used without medical need. I hope to have my say in the next few days and put my side across.”
Of course, you do, Bradley. Yet the defence of legitimacy is hard to maintain after damning testimony by Wiggins’ favourite Team Sky general Shane Sutton exposed what the committee saw as the abuse of the Theraputic Use Exemption (TUE) mechanism for what it was; a device to increase athletic performance and not treat a medical condition.
Thus the starting point for Team Sky, the report claimed, became not how best to treat a legitimate health issue but how to conjure a medical condition as the pretext to get the performance gains desired. The need for speed rather than the need for treatment was the unethical premise exposed.
The descent into questionable practice was first exposed in 2016 by Russian hackers, who revealed how Wiggins had obtained a TUE before three races, including the 2012 Tour de France, for a drug called triamcinolone used in the treatment of asthma. That it contained a powerful corticosteroid, a substance which boosts the power-to-weight ratio of the rider and which had a history of use in the sport, was just coincidence, users argue.
Thiswasfollowedbytheinfamous“jiffy Bag” episode, a package received at the Team Sky bus during a race in France in 2011 that allegedly contained triamcinolone. The role played by the key agents including Wiggins, Brailsford and the team doctor Richard Freeman in denial of this was subsequently investigated by UK Anti-doping, a process which informed much of the DCMSC report.
The failure of Dr Freeman to speak on the record about any of this stuff to any agency is deeply troubling for Wiggins and others who insist on pleading their ethical justifications.
The absence of a rudimentary paper trail that would identify the contents of the Jiffy bag, claimed by Brailsford in the early information trail to be a decongestant available over the counter in France, jars with the broad methodology espoused by a team focused on details.
Freeman resigned from his position at Team Sky before any disciplinary action could take place but is under investigation by the General Medical Council for his role in the mysterious acquisition of testosterone patches by Team Sky in 2011. Freeman and Team Sky claim this was the result of an administrative error by the supplier and deny any wrongdoing.
Team Sky also refuted the tone and the substance of the report. The committee is wrong they wail in its findings and we are wrong in our assumptions that Wiggins and Brailsford are anything other than upstanding paragons of clean sport who would not dream of taking advantage of a convenient regulation.
What Team Sky cannot deny or control is how we feel about the report. That it appears in line with sentiment about a sport long on abuse and short on contrition is a huge problem for Wiggins and Brailsford. You never know, it might even prompt Sir Dave to consider his position. I’m sure he could present his resignation in a way that is not directly linked to the report’s conclusion.
This team has done nothing wrong, but I accept mistakes were made, etc. Something of that order might allow him to slip quietly out the door and give the sport if not his team a chance to cycle on.
Sir Bradley Wiggins has described a parliamentary report that has heavily criticised him and the cycling team he used to lead as “sad”.
The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee’s report, published yesterday, accused the 2012 Tour de France winner and other Team Sky riders of using the drug triamcinolone not for the stated purpose of treating asthma but because it helped them lose weight without compromising power.
It was revealed in 2015 by Russian computer hackers that Wiggins had applied for therapeutic use exemptions (TUES) to have injections of the powerful corticosteroid before three of his biggest races, including the 2012 Tour.
That triggered a chain of events which took in a UK Anti-doping investigation into a claim he was injected
0 Sir Bradley Wiggins says he hopes to put his side across in response to drug claims with triamcinolone at his last warm-up race before the 2011 Tour without permission – something he and Team Sky have always denied. It was said instead he was given a legal decongestant via a nebuliser – a claim UKAD has been able to neither prove nor disprove because of a lack of records.
Based on new evidence from an unnamed source, as well as written testimony from Wiggins’ doctor Richard Freeman and his former coach Shane Sutton, the committee said it did not buy the legal decongestant story and believed the team broke its frequently-cited commitment to only use medication for medical purposes. Sutton told the committee that “what Brad was doing was unethical but not against the rules”.
But in a statement, Wiggins said: “I find it so sad that accusations can be made, where people can be accused of things they have never done which are then regarded as facts. I strongly refute the claim that any drug was used without medical need. I hope to have my say in the next few days and put to my side across.”
“Strongly refute” is a phrase used twice by Team Sky in their response to the report, first in relation to the claim they used medication to enhance performance, and second in reply to the allegation a group of riders used triamcinolone to prepare for the 2012 Tour.
These responses are in contrast to the reaction from British Cycling. The governing body’s chief executive Julie Harrington described the report as “important, thorough and timely” and welcomed its publication. She listed the numerous changes British Cycling has already made to its medical policies, as well as making sure there are “clear boundaries” between the governing and the team its former performance director Sir Dave Brailsford set up in 2010.