Wiggins doctor pulls out of worlds squad
The British Cycling doctor at the centre of the controversy surrounding the delivery of a medical package to Sir Bradley Wiggins and Team Sky has decided not to travel to the UCI world road-race championships in Qatar this week.
Dr Richard Freeman’s withdrawal from the event follows UK Anti-Doping’s decision to launch an investigation into the circumstances which led the former British Cycling coach Simon Cope to transport the medication to the Critérium du Dauphiné in 2011.
Freeman was due to travel with the British team for the event in Doha, which begins today, but he has reached a decision in tandem with British Cycling to pull out. “This was a decision jointly reached by the team management and Richard,” the governing body said. “The riders in Doha will instead
be supported by UCI medical team at the worlds, alongside the usual GB support staff.”
Andy Harrison, British Cycling’s programmes director, said: “This was a decision taken with the best interests of Richard and the riders at heart. We have every confidence that the team will get all the support they need.”
Rod Ellingworth’s 10-rider men’s squad in Doha can expect to be asked about the ongoing furore back home this week. It began when the hackers group Fancy Bears leaked Wiggins’s therapeutic use exemptions for injectable corticosteroids before three of the biggest races of his career. Although the TUEs were all above board and approved by the UCI, and by the World Anti-Doping Agency, it led to Wiggins and Sky being accused of acting unethically because of triamcinolone’s reputation as performance-enhancing.
The situation then escalated this week when former Sky rider Jonathan Tiernan-Locke claimed a British Cycling doctor had “freely offered” the controversial painkiller Tramadol around the GB team at the 2012 worlds, regardless of whether riders were ill or not.
It intensified again when it emerged that UK Anti-Doping were investigating the package that was delivered by hand after the last day of the Critérium du Dauphiné. It led to UKAD officials meeting with British Cycling at Manchester Velodrome on Friday.
Sky yesterday released a statement vowing to clear their name. However, one source told The Sunday Telegraph yesterday that he felt the team’s backers were “close to pulling the plug, certainly if any evidence of wrongdoing is found, but even if it isn’t”.
Lizzie Deignan (née Armitstead), meanwhile, will be the first Briton in
action at the championships today when she competes in the women’s team time trial. Unlike the individual time trials and the road races, the TTT is fought out among professional road teams so Deignan will, today at least, be riding in the colours of her Dutch outfit, Boels-Dolmans, rather than the British jersey.
Deignan herself has found the furore over her participation in the Olympic road race in August was revived this week when Annemiek van Vleuten, the Dutch rider who crashed while leading that race, said Deignan had received “exceptional” treatment and should not have been allowed to compete in Brazil.
That followed Deignan’s successful appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against a UK Anti-Doping doping suspension for missing three out-ofcompetition drugs tests.
Although the reigning world champion – and the favourite for the Rio road race – was able to prove that the tester was at fault for the first of those missed tests, her presence in Rio was hugely controversial.
She can expect an icy reception from some rivals at the start line for today’s race, which will take place in the 40plus degree heat and follow a 40km route from Lusail Sports Complex to The Pearl artificial island. Ludicrously, given how predictable are the temperatures, the talk this week has been that the UCI might be forced to reduce the length of the races.