British cycling ‘credibility’ battered by drug investigation

LONDON — After fueling Britain’s transformation into an Olympic superpower, the country’s cycling reputation is being damaged by a medical mystery that keeps on growing.

Britain’s anti-doping agency and legislators have spent months trying to verify the medication administered to Britain’s most decorated Olympian, Bradley Wiggins, a year before he won the 2012 Tour de France.

Even after interviewing Wiggins, U.K. Anti-Doping is no closer to resolving a case that has exposed a lack of attention to detail that contrasts with the meticulous reputation crafted by Team Sky and British Cycling for precision planning, as the team sought “marginal gains” in the pursuit of glory.

In a British parliamentary hearing on Wednesday, UKAD chief executive Nicole Sapstead landed a bombshell: Team Sky maintained no records of the substance Wiggins required at the 2011 Dauphine Libere race in France.

“I would expect, particularly for a professional road cycling team that was founded on the premise of exhibiting that road racing could be conducted cleanly, to have records that would be able to demonstrate any inferences to the contrary,” Sapstead said.

Damian Collins, the culture, media and sports committee chairman, added after the hearing that the “credibility of Team Sky and British Cycling is in tatters. They are in a terrible position.”

At a previous hearing in December, Team Sky chief Dave Brailsford said Fluimucil, a brand name for a legal decongestant containing acetylcysteine used for clearing mucus, was couriered to Wiggins in a package in 2011. That disclosure followed two months of silence from Team Sky about the package that was a public secret for five years before a newspaper report in October.

But there is no paper trail or written evidence of the treatment and Sapstead said Wednesday that UKAD is investigating whether the substance was in fact the banned corticosteroid called triamcinolone.

“We have asked for inventories and medical records and we have not been able to ascertain that because there are no records,” Sapstead said.

Triamcinolone is the drug for which Wiggins gained a therapeutic use exemption, or TUE, to have injected on three specific occasions between 2011 and 2013. Details of those only emerged following a leak of medical records from the hackers Fancy Bears last year.

Sapstead said British Cycling stored a significant amount of triamcinolone and said either there was “an excessive amount … ordered for one person or quite a few people had a similar problem.”