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news
Sir Bradley Wiggins and Andrew Marr (picture credit BBC).PNGWiggins defends drug use on BBC's Andrew Marr Show
Sir Bradley Wiggins has appeared on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show to defend his use on medical grounds of banned substances ahead of key races including the Tour de France in 2012, when he became the first Briton to win cycling’s biggest race.
Earlier this month, the Fancy Bears computer hacking group published copies of Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) certificates issued by the UCI to Wiggins that revealed, among other things, that he had received intramuscular injections of triamcinolone ahead of the Tour de France in 2011 and 2012 and the Giro d’Italia in 2013.
The certificates noted Wiggins’ “life long allergy to pollen,” resulting in symptoms including “nasal congestion/rhinorrhea, sneezing, throat irritation, wheezing leading to dyspnoea, eye watering [and] runny nose,” and also highlighted a “known allergy to grass pollen.”
Former professional cyclists David Millar and Jörg Jaksche have both admitted having used the drug during their career, with the former saying it had an effect on him beyond that of any other banned substance he ever took, and the latter saying that Wiggins’ pattern of use of it was similar to how it had been used during his period he was riding to enhance performance.
But in a pre-recorded interview with Marr, Wiggins drew a distinction between his use of the drug with the permission of medical professionals and the UCI, and that of riders who had used it specifically to gain an unfair advantage.
“It was prescribed for allergies and respiratory problems,” said the 36-year-old. “I’ve been a lifelong sufferer of asthma and I went to my team doctor at the time and we went in turn to a specialist to see if there’s anything else we could do to cure these problems.
“And he in turn said: ‘Yeah, there’s something you can do but you’re going to need authorisation from cycling’s governing body’.”
He said that the 2012 TUE was only secured once the opinion of a specialist in respiratory conditions had been backed up by three independent doctors.
“This was to cure a medical condition,” Wiggins insisted. “This wasn’t about trying to find a way to gain an unfair advantage, this was about putting myself back on a level playing field in order to compete at the highest level.”
Wiggins has also come under fire due to the nature of the administration of the drug, via injection, especially given comments he made about the use of needles in his 2012 autobiography My Time – a book, moreover, that made no mention of his allergies.
But Wiggins again claimed to Marr that there is a distinction between injections permitted on medical grounds under a TUE and those administered as part of a doping programme.
“It was always a loaded question with regards to doping,” he insisted. “Intravenous injections of iron, EPO etc, no-one ever asked the question: ‘Have you ever had an injection by a medical professional to treat or cure a medical condition?’
“There are two sides to that, and at that period of time it was very much with a doping emphasis in the question.”
Marr, while emphasising that there was no suggestion Wiggins had cheated, put it to him that he and Team Sky had pushed right about against the boundary between what is allowed and what isn’t.
Wiggins’ response was that Sky had always operated within the rules laid down by the UCI and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
He added that with his Tour de France victory coinciding with the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s investigation into Lance Armstrong that in October 2012 saw the American banned from cycling for life, he himself came under particular scrutiny while wearing the yellow jersey that summer.
“Cycling has been through a very turbulent period the last couple of years in the post Lance Armstrong era, and obviously I won the Tour de France right at the height of that in 2012,” he told Marr.
“It’s still an open wound in cycling and it will take many years to get over that, especially for the guys that are winning and competing at performing at the Tour De France.
“Whoever is leading in the sport at that time, and at the moment it’s Team Sky, they’re leading the way, and you know, they’re setting the standard for everybody. And they’re the best at what they do.
“Unfortunately, when you’re the best of what you do sometimes comes scrutiny, especially in a sport that has a tainted history,” he added.
The episode will be available for the next four weeks to viewers in the UK via BBC iPlayer.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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47 comments
Come on...
ask him independent those doctors were? How independent can you be when your salary is being paid by an entity that is best served if everything looked fine and dandy.
Er... that's why they're known as independent doctors: because their salary wasn't being paid by the interested party.
Er... and that's what garuda is questioning. That the third-party wasn't truly "independent", as with the "independent" Vrijman Report. That the UCI, which is ultimately funding the system, isn't a completely uninterested actor in it, as ever.
That wouldn't be the thrust of my critique, however. No matter how altruistic the doctors motives might be, the methodology wasn't set up in order to effectively "scrutinize" applications, as Zorzoli has stated. The doctors aren't guarding against the potential abuse of the drugs. They're just making sure the medical use case exists.
The fact is he claimed he is so clean that he doesn't even use needles except for iv drips and vitamins, then we find out he has a TUE for an injected asthma medication. So now he claims it was fine to have injections because it was a TUE. He lied about needles before. But he says he is not lying now. Well that's cool, since you have been so honest with us before.
for the record i do not think he is a doper. He is guilty of a bigger sin in my book: being an arrogant holier than thou lying hipocrite.
End of? lOl
Where is the evidence he injected vitamins? Where has he now admitted that he did?
This is what the 'no needles' policy is really about. It's the shady use and normalisation of them to inject (so called) vitamins on a regular basis which rightly is frowned upon, and may help foster a doping culture The fact that a doctor administered treatment for a condition intravenously on several occasions is out of scope of the policy, surely. People are wilfully missing the point, as per usual.
Now, you can take issue with TUE's being either abused (doping) or sailing too close to the wind in terms of drug choice (might be the case here), but if you're going to apply new standards, do this for everyone. Release everybodies' TUE's. Scrutinise them all and apply new rules and move on. Don't pander to the Russian politics and haters.
i meant vaccines. We understand what the no needles policy is for. But there was no need to proclaim "look at me, no needles at all" when in fact, it was "no needles at all, except sometimes". I don't think anyone questioning the credibility of wiggo is missing the point at all.
Perhaps Wiggins meant
"no needles... except just before major grand tours." or "it's completely taboo... for those pesky dopers"
I'm having difficulty attributing the 2012 quote below to the same elite athlete who just said on TV he "really struggled" at that time, and so was prescribed a powerful drug injection.
“I’d done all the work, I was fine-tuned. I was ready to go. My body was in good shape. I’m in the form of my life. I was only ill once or twice with minor colds, and I barely lost a day’s training from it.”
The sad thing is we had to learn about it from some dodgy Russian hackers; Where was the rigourous investigative press or whistleblowing cycling insider this time?
Tom Dumoulin put it best. It stinks.
You'd think all these athletes that get caught out in their own lies would think things through a bit more before saying they've never done this or that.
he claims that it was his ghostwriter who said that. Convenient. Maybe he should rename his book as "my time, according to someone else. I just put my name in it so it sells."
Sky have undermined their own philosophy buy playing the rules and not considering how these things are going to look further down the line. 'Marginal gains' and success were still too important. It is orders of magnitude below what was going on in the previous era. Wiggins is defensive, but not a dissembling bastard like Armstrong was on Oprah. It is not the clean break we all wanted from the previous era.
We have gone from the mysterious vitamin injections of the 80s, to the Riis Ulrich Armstrong Rassmussen era to '07, then the Wonky steak era of Contador, now the TUE era of Wiggins and Froome. Progress is being made, but Sky should have made it their goal to be well inside the rules.
Lets remember the context; if this is the best the Russians can dig up on us then there shouldn't be any bigger skeletons in the closet left to find. Get Mike Atherton to rub some dirt on it and it will all be fine.
The use of TUEs is entirely consistent with the philosophy of "marginal gains". Every thing - no matter how "marginal" - available (i.e., legal) to improve performance. If they could somehow have managed to get a TUE for EPO I imagine they would have done so.
The more PR'ing he tries to do for it, the worse he'll look. Look at the picture above for example, he even looks 'guilty' there. The damage was done when insiders and team docs said it was dodgy in the press and on national TV. Public will defend you blindly until faced with authority. Most of us are hardwired to bow before it.
Best to keep the head down and let it fade from public memory IMO, though that's the hardest thing to do if you're actually in his position. He has a ton of stuff he can be doing, look at Millar, actually caught doping on the other side of the rules and his career is doing great now. Brad will always be able to say his pinning was legal, so he shouldn't have any problems moving on to the next stage of his life. Would make a phenomenal coach or director sportif.
Based on what? Not all great athletes make great coaches, and likewise not all great coaches have distinguished competetive careers.
Based on the track team comments, and well, for me his personality. I'm not a Wiggo 'fan', but he is different and I appreciate that. I mark him out as having a high EQ. Could be wrong, who knows.
I couldn't see Froome being an inspiring coach for example, though I do think Froome is by far the superior athlete.
Nice reply, could see him in a mentoring capcity and an inspiration, but a coach is more than that. Time will tell.
Agree with your thouhts on Froome though.
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