Wiggins answer sent late to MPs
BRITISH CYCLING finally posted a written response to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport select committee yesterday.
Yet it remains unclear whether they provided any documentary evidence of what was in the medical package that remains the focus of a UK AntiDoping investigation.
The governing body, who appointed a new performance director yesterday in former Olympic sailing boss Stephen Park, were not prepared to reveal the contents of what appears to have been a response to all the questions posed by MPs in Westminster on Monday.
Bob Howden, the British Cycling president, nevertheless said there should be some record of the medication ordered by Team Sky but delivered by a British Cycling coach in June 2011 for Sir Bradley Wiggins.
According to Sir Dave Brailsford (below), Richard Freeman, then the doctor for Team Sky and now head of medicine at British Cycling, claims the medication he ordered was an over-thecounter decongestant called Fluimucil.
That, however, has been met with widespread scepticism, given the alternative reasons offered, not least by Brailsford, for then British women’s coach Simon Cope’s trip from Manchester to the French Alps. Yesterday, Prentice Steffen, who was Wiggins’ team doctor when he finished fourth in the Tour de France in 2009, said he found Brailsford’s explanation to MPs ‘insufficient’. Steffen also told Cycling News that although Fluimucil was a commonly used drug in the peloton — it is not on the banned list — he would have simply purchased some in a French pharmacy rather than going to the trouble and expense of flying someone over with a medicine that is widely available and costs eight euros. ‘When I run out, which does occur on occasion, I just go to the nearest pharmacy because it’s pretty easy to get over the counter,’ said Steffen before suggesting Brailsford’s attempts to persuade the Daily Mail not to publish the original story reminded him of ‘the Lance (Armstrong) days’. He added: ‘That’s when they would come out with a story that the believers would believe and everyone else wouldn’t think twice about, except for a handful of people who would say: “Hey, that really doesn’t make sense’’.’ Because of its late arrival, the committee plan to review the British Cycling response next week.