‘Wrong people fighting

the eve of the 2011 and 2012 Tours de France and the 2013 Giro d’Italia.

“Taking TUEs just before major events, it raises questions for me,” said Cooke. “It makes me sceptical of what they have done.

“I find the stance of being the cleanest team, yet Dave Brailsford not being able to say what a rider took, definitely makes it hard to back up that claim.”

Cooke explained she used the same substance to treat a serious knee injury in 2003 and 2007, when the only alternative was surgery, and did not race until “long after the performance-enhancing effects had worn off”. She claimed Wiggins used the “same steroid before his main goals of the season”.

If there was any doubt about the point Cooke was making, she spelled it out in the 6,000-word written testimony she provided to the committee.

In a section on her own experiences of trying to race clean in a dirty era, Cooke, who also won the world road race crown in 2008, noted the large number of riders at the biggest races with TUEs.

She wrote that having such an exemption “was a very convenient way to mask a doping programme”. Cooke supplied written evidence followed by an hour’s testimony via video link from Paris. She also hit out at what she said was sexism at the heart of British Cycling, pointing out that Cope, whose salary as women’s coach came from the public purse, should have been focusing on his own job rather than delivering the package to Wiggins.

“Cope was doing what he was told to do,” she said. “Shane Sutton states he approved Cope’s trip with the jiffy bag. Nobody in the organisation anywhere would have asked the question, ‘Hasn’t Cope