Wiggins, Brailsford and the medical package delivered to Team Sky
THE publication last month of medical records belonging to Sir Bradley Wiggins was already hugely damaging to the reputation of the first Briton to win the Tour de France and Team Sky, the British cycling team that have long claimed they can dominate the sport without resorting to the use of banned substances.
‘Zero tolerance’ to doping has been Sky’s mantra and ‘marginal gains’ the approach of their team principal, Sir Dave Brailsford.
But inside Team Sky the details of the documents leaked by hackers from Russia, known as the Fancy Bears, sparked concerns that Sportsmail can now reveal have led to UK Anti-Doping launching an investigation.
Over the past few weeks, Wiggins has been widely criticised for applying for a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) — a document allowing an athlete to take banned substances for medical needs — for the controversial corticosteroid, triamcinolone, before his last three Grand Tour races, including the 2012 Tour he won to make British sporting history. The 36-year-old five-time Olympic champion has vehemently denied abusing the system, saying he needed the powerful drug to treat asthma and allergy symptoms.
Many remain unconvinced, with one leading cycling journalist suggesting the record of Wiggins’ Tour victory should be accompanied by an asterisk, noting the use of a drug synonymous with cyclists who have illegitimately used it to assist weight loss.
He also questioned whether Wiggins and Brailsford should have been knighted in 2013.
For at least one member of Team Sky, however, the date of the first triamcinolone TUE that Wiggins was granted by the International Cycling Union in 2011 was a cause for concern. On the document leaked by the Fancy Bears last month, the date of the TUE is June 29, 2011.
It is one of six TUEs Wiggins has had in his career. This was confirmed to Sportsmail by Wiggins’ representatives at XIX Entertainment.
But what worried the Team Sky insider was a package delivered on June 12, 2011.
On that day, Wiggins won the Dauphine Libere seven-stage race in France in what, at that stage, represented the finest victory of his professional road-racing career.
The final stage, on June 12, was a 117.5km run from Pontcharra to the ski resort of La Toussuire.
But also there in La Toussuire that day was Simon Cope, a former professional rider then working for British Cycling and now the boss of Sir Bradley’s UCI continental team, Team Wiggins.
Cope was the women’s Under 23 academy coach and the manager of the women’s elite road race team between 2009 and 2011. His salary was paid by British Cycling.
But he was in France for the conclusion of a men’s professional race. It is understood he made the trip at the request of Team Sky and Dr Richard Freeman, who has subsequently moved on from Sky to work with the British Cycling team that dominated at the Rio Olympics.
Cope flew into Geneva Airport in Switzerland that day, hired a car, drove for two hours to La Toussuire in France, delivered the package and then drove back to Geneva Airport, from where he flew home to the UK that evening.
On the return journey he was accompanied by Shane Sutton, then the head coach of Team Sky and British Cycling and personal coach and mentor to Wiggins.
Cope’s trip was funded by British Cycling, although there was a system in place where they would invoice Team Sky at the end of each month.
After winning the Dauphine on June 12, Wiggins had to perform the usual duties of a race winner. He had to celebrate on the podium, speak to the media and be tested by doping control.
Then, however, it is alleged Wiggins returned to the state-ofthe-art Team Sky bus in La Toussuire. This has been disputed by Sky, who say the bus had left before Wiggins completed his post-race duties.
The Death Star, as Sky nicknamed it, was some vehicle. Up front were nine luxury seats for the nine members of a Tour de France team. At the back was an office that doubled as a treatment room. It came equipped with a glass sliding door that could change shade to guarantee absolute privacy.
It is alleged Wiggins and Freeman were seen going into the treatment room of the bus after Wiggins had completed his post-race duties on June 12, 2011.
Sportsmail asked yesterday for comment to this observation, but none was forthcoming by the time of going to press. Investigators at UK Anti-Doping now want to discover what was in the package delivered by Cope.
British Cycling have privately confirmed it did contain a medical substance. British Cycling suggest, privately, that it was not triamcinolone, but they are unable to confirm if they have a record of what the package contained.
Wiggins has denied he was given an injection of a substance that in 2011 would have required a TUE. He forcefully made the point in an email to this newspaper that any such breach of regulations would have been detected in a doping test he was given after winning the British Cycling road race championship on June 26.
The rules in 2011 were clear. Published on February 1, 2011, the UCI anti-doping rules stated ‘in competition refers to the period that starts one day before or, in the case of a major tour, three days before the start of an event and finishing at midnight of the day on which the event finishes’.
This means an injection of certain banned substances given prior to midnight on the day of the race would require a TUE. The maximum sanction for a breach would be a two-year ban.
On September 22, I asked Wiggins’s representative at XIX Entertainment, Julian Henry, about the package delivered by Cope on June 12, 2011.
And on the same day the same question was put to Dr Freeman via the head of communications at British Cycling.
Dr Freeman has not responded but the response from the Wiggins camp was swift.
First there was an email directly from Wiggins, stating that he was ‘not happy with the way Julian Henry has handled this whole situation’.
He said: ‘Just wanted to let you know that what comes back to you from Julian is not representative of what I think we should do.’
That email landed at 3.55pm, and was followed by a further email 35 minutes later after a request to speak to him directly.
‘Just in a train back from London but Cath (Wiggins’ wife) has put together a timeline to release as I was tested at the Dauphine 2011 every day as the leader and winner and 14 days later as the winner of the national Road race and would have tested positive had anything been administered in that period before given Authorisation for that drug!’ said Wiggins.
At 5.05pm an email arrived from Henry, stating that I was ‘operating under a serious misapprehension as to the facts, especially in respect of the information you have been given about the injection being given on 12th June’.
The Daily Mail also received a legal letter from Harbottles on behalf of Wiggins, saying any assertion their client was given an injection subject to the 2011 TUE before June 29 was false. On September 24, I was contacted by an intermediary who said he had spoken to Brailsford, who in turn was keen to meet.
I was told Brailsford was deeply concerned by the allegations and extremely worried about the impact such a story could have on the future of a cycling team he had created from nothing to dominate the professional road race circuit. Team Sky have won the Tour de France in four of the past five years.
IWAS encouraged to contact Brailsford by text to arrange a meeting, which I did. He replied immediately, and a meeting was arranged in Alderley Edge, Cheshire, on Tuesday, September 27, for a ‘general off-therecord’ chat.
He initially suggested a bike ride before sitting down for coffee, only to settle simply for a coffee because he had an 8am conference call that made it impossible to ride first.
On Monday, September 26, Brailsford gave interviews to journalists
— me included — at Manchester Velodrome. He responded to the accusation that Team Sky had ventured into a dangerous grey area by authorising requests for Wiggins to be granted three TUEs, as revealed by the Fancy Bears leaks. The following morning Brailsford and I met in private at a cafe in Alderley Edge. An explanation was given to
Sportsmail for Cope’s trip to La Toussuire. It was said Cope had gone there to see Emma Pooley, the 2008 Olympic silver medallist who contested the road race and the time trial at the recent Rio Games. But on June 12, 2011, Pooley was racing in the Emakumeen Bira in Spain, 687 miles from La Toussuire. On Wednesday, Sportsmail contacted Pooley to check she had not travelled to La Toussuire after her race. ‘I absolutely was not at the Dauphine Libere in 2011, or any other year, and I absolutely did not meet Simon Cope there,’ she said in an email.
‘That day I was at the BiraEmakumeen-Bira stage race in the Pays Basque in Spain. I lost the yellow jersey on a rainy dangerous descent.’
A request to Brailsford last week to explain why Cope was in La Toussuire did not receive a response.
On September 28, at just after 8am, a text message landed from Brailsford. He said he was gathering evidence to disprove the concerns around the package by demonstrating that the team bus had left La Toussuire before Wiggins completed his podium, doping control and media commitments. If the bus had left, how could Wiggins have boarded the bus and gone into the back room with Dr Freeman?
Brailsford said he had even requested the ‘tacograph details’ for the bus, which would reveal information about the vehicle’s driving time, speed and distance. A little later another text landed. ‘Update — so bus driver has confirmed Brad didn’t go back to bus and recalled being p ***** off not seeing him after he won and before he left with the bus. He’s confirming this in writing and statement.’
Later that day, just before 2.30pm, a further text landed from Brailsford. ‘So our normal protocol when a rider is on the podium is that the team and other riders return to the bus and leave. The rider on the podium would have a carer/comms guy and doc with them and then do podium — anti doping — media duties which can vary in terms of length of time taken. When finishes they then travel back alone in our dedicated “podium car”.
‘At end of Dauphine the same duties were done — team bus left and in this case there was no podium car but Tim Kerrison (Team Sky’s head of athlete performance) and Rod (Ellingworth, head of performance operations at Team Sky) waited with camper (van) and took Brad to next venue at training camp in Sestriere.
‘There were also other vehicles which travelled the same route with other riders and staff going to same venue. They all are together that evening. No one witnessed Brad having an injection. Simon Cope AND Rod both travel on same flight to the end of the race both to do logistical duties — Simon drove Shane to airport and Rod went to Sestriere. More to come from Doc.’
BRAILSFORD then called. He said he trusted Kerrison and Ellingworth with his life. He said they too said the bus had left before Wiggins completed his post-race commitments. As had the driver. He was not sure if he could send on their witness statements because they were responding to his questions without realising their statements would appear in the media.
We asked if he could draft one in his own name. He said he would consider it but the statement had not arrived by the time of going to press.
I asked for an explanation as to why on YouTube there is a video — taken seemingly by a cycling fan — after the final stage of the Dauphine Libere in La Toussuire on June 12, 2011, with Wiggins, dressed in his post-race kit, standing by the bus, giving an interview.
Last Wednesday, September 28, concluded with another flurry of messages from Brailsford. It was around midnight. In one he asked if the Daily Mail was ‘tapping my phone?’ I said we certainly were not. ‘This is getting a bit strange and complicated,’ he added.
On September 30, Wiggins gave an interview to The Guardian, with the ghost writer of the 2012 autobiography that has raised further questions. In a book that made no mention of his asthma symptoms or his TUEs, Wiggins said he had never been in better health prior to his 2012 Tour victory.
But in an interview with the BBC’s Andrew Marr, broadcast on Sunday, September 25, he said he was in fact struggling with his breathing prior to the Tour and that led to the application for a second TUE for an intramuscular injection of triamcinolone.
In the interview that followed with The Guardian, he revealed when he and Freeman first discussed using a corticosteroid to combat his ailments: at the 2011 Dauphine Libere.