WHAT WAS IN THE JIFFY BAG, BRAD? GOD KNOWS
Wiggins’ startling admission
HE STILL claims to have no idea what was in the Jiffy bag, and last night’s explanation for misleading statements to his own biographer in 2016 was also less than convincing. But Sir Bradley Wiggins nevertheless moved to defend himself against accusations of cheating, claiming he was the victim of a malicious campaign to discredit him based on the testimony of ‘anonymous sources’.
Wiggins woke to front-page headlines and calls to be stripped of his knighthood yesterday following the publication of a damning parliamentary report that said he and his former colleagues at Team Sky had abused the system to use a powerful drug that helped him win the Tour de France.
His response was to grant the BBC an hour- long interview clearly designed to garner some sympathy after essentially being branded a fraud by MPs. ‘ No subject was off limits,’ we were informed in advance.
Wiggins still doesn’t really explain why he needed such a potent corticosteroid like triamcinolone to treat asthma and allergy symptoms which a small army of experts have said could have been managed with the use of inhalers. And while he referenced a specialist brought in to support his application for the medical exemption that allowed him to take triamcinolone, he did not come armed with a doctor’s note.
Instead he blamed Team Sky’s handling of the situation, describing Sir Dave Brailsford’s bungled attempts to dissuade this newspaper from running the original Jiffy bag story as ‘ludicrous’ and painting a picture of a relatively new cycling team (ultra-professional we were always told) that was too chaotic to keep proper medical records.
Without any actual evidence of what was in that package and anything beyond his own word to contest the conclusions of a parliamentary committee that heard evidence from former Sky employees as well as a number of experts, Wiggins simply appealed to us to believe what he was saying.
One major problem was the statement given to MPs by Wiggins’s former coach and mentor, Shane Sutton.
Wiggins once said Sutton was like a ‘father’ to him but the Australian admitted to the committee that in his opinion Sir Bradley’s use of triamcinolone was ‘unethical’.
Clearly the two men are not as close as they once were. But in response Wiggins said: ‘That hurts me, actually. Shane knows exactly why I was taking that medication. I had complained of these problems during the Dauphine, complained after the Dauphine. I went to see a specialist outside of the team in order to see what we could do so I could compete at the highest level at the peak of the season when I had worked to that point. That really hurts me that someone like Shane would say that, because . . . I don’t know what his motivation is, that’s all I’ll say.’
Wiggins won the week-long Criterium du Dauphine that year (2011) in what, at that time, was his finest victory on the road. And nowhere in his 2012 book, My Time, reflecting on a race that concluded with the delivery of that now infamous medical package, did he say he was suffering with ill-health. Indeed, in that book he never mentioned his troubles with asthma and said the only injections administered to him were for vaccinations.
IN the same book he said he was in perfect health in that perfect summer of 2012, even though we now know he had another shot of triamcinolone before beating the world’s best bike riders over the mountains of France. He told the BBC last night he did not want to reveal such weaknesses to his rivals despite having won the Tour and a fourth Olympic gold in London nine days later by then.
But when Russian computer hackers revealed in 2016 that he had used triamcinolone before the 2012 Tour and two other major races, he was asked by his biographer if he had also used the drug out of competition. The Guardian actually presented the interview as a Q & A, and to the direct question of whether he had any ‘injections out of competition’, he replied: ‘No.’
In written evidence to the parliamentary committee, however, he said he had received a triamcinolone injection out of competition, when a medical exemption certificate is not required.
Asked by the BBC to explain this last night, he said: ‘I never used it in competition without a TUE.’
He was reminded last night that David Millar, a convicted drug cheat, called triamcinolone, a drug that aids weight loss without decreasing power, the most potent drug he had ever used during his own cycling career.
‘ What can I say to that?’ said Wiggins.
The BBC’s Dan Roan then asked: ‘You can’t sit here and say that you didn’t get any performance enhancement from that? It’s not possible to say that with any certainty?’ ‘No I can’t,’ said Wiggins. But what was in the Jiffy bag? ‘God knows,’ he said. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. The first time I became aware of a package was when the Daily Mail contacted me in October 2016. The innuendo was there was an injection in the back of the bus, in front of 12 other people, that mysteriously no one else saw. We would have been breaking the rules had we done that.’
There was actually a separate treatment room at the back of the bus with a glass door that can change colour to provide complete privacy, but these are mere details. Brailsford claimed the bus had left before Wiggins had returned from podium, media and antidoping duties, only for a video on YouTube to prove otherwise. The major problem, of course, was the lack of medical records to show what the Jiffy bag contained. The now former Team Sky and British Cycling doctor Richard Freeman claims it was a legal decongestant, while there is an allegation it contained triamcinolone.
‘It’s a shame they couldn’t keep a bloody record of what was in this package that went out because we wouldn’t be here now — there wouldn’t have been a Daily Mail article,’ complained Wiggins.
He insisted that ‘not at any point in my career’ had he crossed the ethical line MPs say he, Brailsford and Team Sky have breached.
And he rejected the allegation by the committee that he used triamcinolone nine times, stating it was only four.
‘These allegations, it’s the worst thing to be accused of, but it is also the hardest thing to prove you haven’t done. We are not dealing within a legal system; I would have more rights if I had murdered someone. The widespread effect on the family, it’s horrific.’
The ‘ whole Jiffy bag thing’ he described as a ‘shambles’. ‘I think it’s just a sign of the times as well, back in 2011 the initial thing of this package, year two of Team Sky, just carnage, disorganisation.’
Yesterday Sky appeared to be standing resolutely by Brailsford, while UKAD and UK Sport were continuing to review the report.
Wiggins would argue, however, that for him the damage has been done.