‘Sceptical’ Cooke in swipe at Wiggins
BRITAIN’S Olympic gold medallist Nicole Cooke has told MPs that she was “sceptical” of Bradley Wiggins’ use of Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs).
Cooke, 33, who won the road race at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, also branded cycling sexist and launched a fierce attack on measures in place to combat doping, which she described as “the wrong people fighting the wrong war, in the wrong way, with the wrong tools”.
Painting a damning picture of how “a sport run by men for men” is governed, Cooke was the latest prominent figure to appear before Parliament’s Culture, Media COOKE: Sexism row and Sport Committee, which is investigating doping in sport. But Cooke said the evidence given by Team Sky chief Dave Brailsford and British Cycling’s former technical director Shane Sutton did not “ring true”.
The sport has been rocked by revelations that a mysterious Jiffy bag containing medication was transported to France by British Cycling women’s team manager Simon Cope for Wiggins and Team Sky at the 2011 Criterium race.
It has also been revealed that Wiggins, the 2012 Tour de France champion and Britain’s most decorated Olympian, who suffers from asthma, applied for three TUEs – doctor’s notes that let athletes take substances that would otherwise be banned – for the substance triamcinolone acetonide on