IT’S ETHICALLY WRONG, SKY RIDER TELLS WIGGINS
Now Wiggins comes under fire from another Sky rider
SIR BRADLEY Wiggins yesterday came under fire from another Team Sky cyclist, who described riders who seek permission to use banned drugs in competition as ‘ethically wrong’.
The pressure has been on Wiggins since Russian hackers revealed that he had applied for a therapeutic use exemption to use a controversial corticosteroid just before the 2012 Tour de France he won and two other major road races.
And Irishman Nicolas Roche, who is the son of 1987 triple crown winner Stephen and will leave Team Sky to join BMC Racing next season, takes a dim view of Wiggins’ use of triamcinolone, even if he did have an exemption because of asthma and allergy symptoms.
‘ Like I said already on my Twitter a few weeks ago, when WADA was hacked the first time and before the Wiggins story, there is a major problem with TUEs,’ Roche told cyclingnews.com.
‘There is a problem with the actual system. Again, you can do whatever you want against Wiggins, but unfortunately, although ethically it’s wrong, he is within the rules.
‘It is wrong that these rules are like that. That’s where the main problem is.
‘Once we get those rules right, there won’t be any abuse, but that’s the priority.’
Roche’s comments will come as another blow to Team Sky when it was only on Sunday that the Irishman was riding for them in the UCI Road Cycling World Championships in Doha.
Wiggins, the first Briton to win the Tour de France, plans to retire next month. He is scheduled to race in Abu Dhabi next week before competing in the Six Day London event and then for six days in Ghent, Belgium, where he was born.
But insiders have said that senior officials in the sport believe it would be prudent for the 36-year- old five-time Olympic champion to call time on his hugely successful career while UK Anti-Doping investigate ‘allegations of wrongdoing’.
One allegation, as Sportsmail revealed last week, centres on a mystery medical package that Team Sky arranged for a British Cycling coach to deliver to the end of a race in France that Wiggins had just won.
Team Sky strongly refute all the allegations of wrongdoing, as do British Cycling.
And yesterday insiders suggested that general manager Sir Dave Brailsford may ask a senior member of the Team Sky staff to step forward and take responsibility for the misleading information that has created so much suspicion around the mystery package.
Brailsford told Sportsmail that Simon Cope, then a women’s cycling coach at British Cycling and now the boss of Team Wiggins, had made the trip to La Toussuire in France to meet Emma Pooley — not to deliver a medical package to Team Sky doctor Richard Freeman. Pooley, though, was 700 miles away, racing in Spain.
And it might well be that Brailsford initially received this information from other members of Team Sky staff, as well as the details of the Team Sky bus that he provided in a bid to disprove the allegation that Wiggins and Freeman had a private meeting on the bus, after the rider had won the 2011 Dauphine Libere.
But Cope had responded to initial questions from the Daily Mail by telling officials three days before Brailsford met with this newspaper that he had made the trip to see Pooley, giving the Team Sky principal ample time to establish if that was, indeed, the case.
Last night Sky moved to express their ongoing support for the under-fire cycling team, who have been widely accused of crossing an ethical line and undermining their own zero-tolerance policy towards the use of banned substances.
Graham McWilliam, the deputy head of Sky News and the chairman of the Team Sky board, posted a series of tweets that said: ‘ Keep your feet firmly on the ground and stay focused on what’s important.
‘For Team Sky that’s racing and winning, the right way. That’s what we’ve done from the start and that’s what we’ll continue to do in future.
‘I can assure you of Sky’s full and continued support. There is no equivocation on our part. We trust you, we believe in you and we remain as excited about this sport as ever.’
Racing and winning, the right way? After the publication of the leaked Wiggins TUE documents there are plenty who would question that, Rupert Murdoch employees among them.
‘There’s a major problem with TUEs — once we get the rules right there will be no abuse’ Sky Rider Nicolas Roche (left)