Doper Landis calls for Wiggins to be stripped of his Tour title
... says convicted drug cheat Floyd Landis!
BRADLEY Wiggins was facing calls to be stripped of his 2012 Tour de France title last night, with disgraced cyclist Floyd Landis also suggesting Team Sky cannot survive the damning parliamentary report published this week.
Wiggins might dismiss Landis as a former doper with an axe to grind, but the man who was erased as the winner of the 2006 Tour after failing a drugs test does at least know his subject.
The same could be said of Michael Rasmussen, who was removed from the 2007 Tour for a previous doping violation when he was leading the race. He too has had his say on the WigginsTeam Sky controversy and makes some damning observations.
A committee of MPs has accused Wiggins of taking a corticosteroid to enhance his performance rather than for medical need prior to winning the 2012 Tour, while also stating Dave Brailsford and Team Sky crossed an ethical line when it came to obtaining medical exemption certificates to give such substances to riders.
The report carried more weight with the admission by Shane Sutton, coach and mentor to Wiggins and Brailsford’s deputy, that Wiggins’s use of triamcinolone during his career was ‘unethical’.
Wiggins has categorically denied cheating and maintains that he required the anti-inflammatory steroid to treat asthma and pollen allergies. Team Sky refute claims that their riders used medication to enhance performance.
But Landis, now the central figure in the federal whistleblower case against Lance Armstrong in America, has spoken out, echoing the view of MPs that Wiggins’s use of triamcinolone was to help him lose weight and so increase his power on the bike. The American told ‘I don’t know why, in the report, they said there was no doping violation. For me, it absolutely falls into that category, by the very definition.
‘They used it for performance enhancement and there’s no ambiguity there. Wiggins should lose his Tour title. I can’t see how the sport authorities can let it slide. You can’t take them seriously if they don’t act. There’s a report right there for them and the World Anti-Doping Agency have no choice but to suspend him and take his title away. If they were legitimate, that’s what they’d do.
‘For a guy like Wiggins, who was too heavy and not a climber, corticoids (such as triamcinolone) would be just as beneficial as steroids, EPO and blood doping, because if he didn’t use it then he wouldn’t have been able to get that skinny, and all the EPO in the world wouldn’t have helped him get over the mountains.
‘People shouldn’t downplay what has gone on. He was using steroids. They kicked me out and they took my title for that. They better f ***** g take his.’
Brailsford continues to retain the backing of his employers but Landis sees a bleak future for the professional road team who have won the Tour for five of the last six years. ‘This has to be the end of the team,’ he said. ‘I’m 100 per cent sure there will not be a Sky team at the Tour this year.
‘The little pieces add up and no one with more than two brain cells would add it all up and conclude it was all just coincidental.’
Rasmussen gave his view on the power of triamcinolone, which has a long history of abuse in cycling. ‘Triamcinolone is a top-shelf drug — it’s a very, very effective drug if you want to ride your bike faster,’ he told The Evening Standard.
‘It makes you feel stronger, you get leaner, faster and it helps with fatigue. I thought it was incredible. We can’t believe what’s said. You have Wiggins at one time saying he’s never had an injection to then the fact it’s three times.
‘The only thing that can happen here is for Sky to try to re-establish a little trust. They can do that by letting Dave Brailsford go. He’s too much part of the problem, he just has to go. He’s been head of this shop for quite a while now.’
Chris Froome is facing a ban after his failed drugs test at last year’s Vuelta a Espana but yesterday Sky’s principal rider spoke in defence of Brailsford and described as ‘rubbish’ any suggestion he might have been part of a group of riders in 2012 who joined Wiggins in using triamcinolone.
On Team Sky and Brailsford, he told Cycling Weekly: ‘I wouldn’t still be in the team if I didn’t believe in the team and the people around me. Dave B has brought all those people together.’