- News
- Reviews
- Bikes
- Accessories
- Accessories - misc
- Computer mounts
- Bags
- Bar ends
- Bike bags & cases
- Bottle cages
- Bottles
- Cameras
- Car racks
- Child seats
- Computers
- Glasses
- GPS units
- Helmets
- Lights - front
- Lights - rear
- Lights - sets
- Locks
- Mirrors
- Mudguards
- Racks
- Pumps & CO2 inflators
- Puncture kits
- Reflectives
- Smart watches
- Stands and racks
- Trailers
- Clothing
- Components
- Bar tape & grips
- Bottom brackets
- Brake & gear cables
- Brake & STI levers
- Brake pads & spares
- Brakes
- Cassettes & freewheels
- Chains
- Chainsets & chainrings
- Derailleurs - front
- Derailleurs - rear
- Forks
- Gear levers & shifters
- Groupsets
- Handlebars & extensions
- Headsets
- Hubs
- Inner tubes
- Pedals
- Quick releases & skewers
- Saddles
- Seatposts
- Stems
- Wheels
- Tyres
- Health, fitness and nutrition
- Tools and workshop
- Miscellaneous
- Tubeless valves
- Buyers Guides
- Features
- Forum
- Recommends
- Podcast
Sir Bradley Wiggins and Andrew Marr (picture credit BBC).PNGUK Anti-Doping reportedly investigating Sir Bradley Wiggins and Team Sky
UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) is reported to have launched an investigation into Sir Bradley Wiggins and Team Sky regarding a package said to have contained medicine that was flown to France on the final day of the 2011 Critérium du Dauphiné at La Toussuire.
The package, which was taken by plane to Geneva by a British Cycling employee who returned the the UK the same evening, reports the Daily Mail’s Matt Lawton. The governing body confirmed to him that it did contain a medical substance, but have been unable to specify which one.
The race finished more than a fortnight before Wiggins was given the drug Triamcinolone under a Therapeutic Use Exemption dated 29 June 2011, as revealed by data published by the Fancy Bears hacking group last month.
As part of the Daily Mail’s investigation, Lawton exchanged messages and emails with Wiggins and his representatives, as well as with Team Sky prinicipal Sir Dave Brailsford, whom he met with last month to discuss the situation further.
The Daily Mail says it has received a letter from lawyers acting for Wiggins, the gist of which is that “any assertion their client was given an injection subject to the 2011 TUE before June 29 was false.”
The rider also insists that had he taken any banned substance, it would have been detected in the anti-doping control he underwent after winning the British national road race championship on 26 June 2011.
Brailsford has also rejected claims that Wiggins was administered the product contained in the package – whatever it was – in the treatment room on board the Team Sky bus following the final Dauphiné stage, insisting the vehicle was no longer at the finish area by the time the race winner had completed the post-race protocols of anti-doping control, podium presentation and press conference.
Lawton, who prior to the Rio Olympics broke the story of world champion Lizzie Armitstead’s missed drugs tests, said that according to “a Team Sky insider,” it was Simon Cope, working at the time for British Cycling but now manager of Team Wiggins, who flew out from the UK to deliver the package.
The Daily Mail says that Cope came to La Toussuire after a request from Team Sky and its then doctor, Richard Freeman, now with British Cycling, and that after his arrival Wiggins and Freeman retired to the treatment room in the Team Sky bus, according to its source.
The newspaper adds that British Cycling have suggested the substance contained in the package was not triamcinolone, which Wiggins subsequently received his TUE for, although the governing body could not confirm whether there was a record of what was inside.
The reporter met with Brailsford last week, with the Team Sky coach telling him that Cope, who was then manager of the Great Britain elite women’s road team, had made the journey to La Toussuire to deliver the package not to Wiggins, but to Emma Pooley.
On the day in question, however, Pooley was racing in Spain’s Basque region in the Emakumeen Bira. She told the Daily Mail: “'I absolutely was not at the Dauphiné Libéré [the race’s former name] in 2011, or any other year, and I absolutely did not meet Simon Cope there.
“That day I was at the Bira-Emakumeen-Bira stage race in the Pays Basque in Spain. I lost the yellow jersey on a rainy dangerous descent.”
Brailsford also insisted that the Team Sky bus left the finish area after the end of the stage, without Wiggins, and says that the driver was “pissed off” he hadn’t returned to the vehicle so he could congratulate him on his victory.
The Daily Mail has questioned that, highlighting a YouTube video which shows the rider being interviewed in front of a team vehicle and with the bus to his right. It’s unclear, however, at exactly what point that footage was shot, and it’s possible it could have been filmed before the podium presentation.
In a subsequent text message to Lawton, Brailsford is reported to have asked him whether the Daily Mail was “tapping my phone?” “I said we certainly were not,” says the reporter, to which Brailsford replied, “This is getting a bit strange and complicated.”
Wiggins and Brailsford have insisted that the triamcinolone that he was allowed to use under that TUE issued later in the month – he would receive similar permission ahead of the 2012 Tour de France, which he won, and the 2013 Giro d’Italia – was to treat a genuine medical condition, his allergies to grass and pollen.
While there is no suggestion Wiggins broke the rules in obtaining those TUEs, which were issued by the UCI in accordance with anti-doping regulations governing their use, the timing ahead of major races, method of administration through intramuscular injections, and the fact the substance has been used by others specifically to enhance performance have seen the rider’s use of the drug come under intense scrutiny.
That has been magnified by Team Sky’s insistence from its launch in 2010 that it has a zero tolerance approach to doping, and by statements in Wiggins’ 2012 autobiography My Time regarding his state of health ahead of races, and his aversion to needles.
Those seemingly conflict with what he has now admitted in connection with the TUEs in interviews with the BBC’s Andrew Marr and with the Guardian’s William Fotheringham – ghost writer of My Time – and whom he told last month that it was at the 2011 Dauphiné that he and Freeman had first discussed his using triamcinolone to combat his allergies.
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.
Latest Comments
- E6toSE3 5 min 17 sec ago
Lights: they should be punished. Unlit bikes are a serious threat to pedestrians and other cyclists, especially when riding on pavements that not...
- AidanR 51 min 57 sec ago
You might be safer using one of these: https://yplac.co.uk/product/yplac-mini-stickers/
- I love my bike 1 hour 1 min ago
I live in an English city, where multiple times in the year, one side of the market square & high street (that are explicitly open to cycle...
- chrisonabike 1 hour 2 min ago
Wait a minute - coaster brakes not suited for descents? Someone better time-travel back and tell the embryonic MTB community......
- chrisonabike 1 hour 5 min ago
Argh! Now there's some kind of rat problem there too! Definitely no windows!
- quiff 3 hours 16 min ago
Fair point - I was restricting myself to pedal bikes. As I've never spent that kind of money on anything though (mortgage doesn't count), it's kind...
- brooksby 4 hours 18 min ago
And finally: I wonder how many of the "more than 3,000" signatures on that petition are actually locals, who live or work there (and are not just...
- Doug_D 5 hours 54 min ago
Another book suggestion - I can highly recommend "Lost Summers and Half-Forgotten Afternoons: A Mint Sauce collection" - a beautifully presented...
- mdavidford 7 hours 45 min ago
I think you're missing an opportunity to pack even more tech into it - add accelerometers that can detect whether they're pedalling or stepping....
Add new comment
29 comments
I think "raid" is typical DM hyperbole. UKAD wouldn't have been trying to surprise anyone and search for hidden evidence. It would be a formally arranged interview to investigate the allegations.
Somebody has obviously been talking, because I can't see any way the DM could have picked up this story without inside knowledge.
It's an interesting angle to take, because I guess if you print "X injected Y with Z" there's no corroborating evidence and it's just hearsay, but a paper trail showing that someone made a day return trip from the UK to France to deliver "something" is actually concrete evidence that can be investigated.
Not much else to say at the moment, but interested to see what comes out of this.
"The package, which was taken by plane to Geneva by a British Cycling employee who returned the the UK the same evening..." Hardly a case of 'moto-man', is it?
If Sky/British Cycling want to run a decent doping programme, maybe they should try watching a few Mission Impossible movies first....
The only one who seems to be playing it cool and is not too concerned with all this is the man that so many people want to be guilty of doping, Froome. His comments on this issue have been said in such a way that I don't actually believe he knows anything about this and is ready for any investigations, before this I wasn't too sure whether he was 100% clean.
Great! So the PR seems to be working. I presume in all of this Froome was cleaning his bike, or collecting football stickers while Wiggins, Brailsford and the Sky doctors had their 'grown-up conversations in another room. Seems reasonable. It seems to be Jens Voigts approach to having missed the pharmaceutical free for all of the late 90s and early 2000s, so why not?
UKAD seem to be worried that they are. They've just raided the Manchester offices of BC.
"raided", are you sure? Or is that how the Daily Maul wrote it?
Hardly a raid, even UKAD have said it wasn't a raid just a visit. But why let the truth get in the way of a story.
It never ceases to amaze me that people struggle with the reality of modern sport.
As much as I hate the Daily Mail, some of Matt Lawton's recent work there has been sterling. Even Paul Kimmage has been congratulating him on his cycling coverage. He's one of the few British journalists genuinely holding cycling to account, I wouldn't be so quick to jump to the "it's typical Daily Mail nonsense" here, even though I'd be the first to do so on much of their output.
To be frank, Sky's response to this article has been a complete mess of very bad looking inconsitencies - Brailsford claims the team bus was never there to receive the delivery, even though there is photographic evidence of Wigins being interviewed outside the bus on the day in question. Sky claim the delivery was for Emma Pooley, she can prove she was hundreds of miles away at the time too. The whole thing stinks. Remember that long trips to Switzerland to buy medications has long been the trade route of choice for doping athletes from Millar to the US Postal team, thanks to the ready availibility of many medications over the counter that require a prescription elsewhere. Tyler Hamilton recounts several of these trips in his book "The Secret Race" on his time at US Postal too.
The report certinally is written that way. Heavy on the drama, light on the facts.
Lets see what hapens next.
Nothing wrong with UKAD conducting an investigation. Its part of the process, and if it finds any genuine wrong doing, then that should be delt with.
However the Daily Wail's piece... really did seem to be clutching at straws. I kept reading to find out why this package was causing so much angst... but either they got nothing, or didn't want to say.
hmmm, with the stories, and chosen sources, there does seem to be something in that.
However in this instance, I wonder if its less to do with the Daily Wail's inherent evilness, and more to do with the UK press's obsession with hyping someone up when they are on the rise, and then tearing into them once they finish being usefull to them.
And presumably the UCI and WADA
Perhaps the Daily Mail should take on JTL as an inside reporter. Just think how credible and dangerous that would be for cycling!
The Daily Mail...publishing BS to discredit and demonise cyclists...NEVER!!! IT CAN'T BE TRUE!!!!!
The Mail also reported JTL's helpful comments. They seem to on a mission to discredit Sir Brad and the sport in general. If they are to be believed, then it seems to me pretty well everyone is complicit in the "crime" - Wiggins, Sky, BC, UKADA and that isn't credible to me
Sadly this seems entirely creddible to me. The relationship between Team Sky,BC and Wiggins has always been incredibly close, to the extent that BC/Team Sky are often the same thing - It was Simon Cope, a British Cycling employee, flying to Geneva to buy medications for Team Sky and then invoiced them at the end of the month in the event UKAD are currently investigating. BC and Sky and therefore by extension Wiggins have a long history of shared offices/staff/training facilities. Brailsford and most of the Sky staff have been BC employees themselves at one time or another, and of course Wiggins has ridden for both.
So you're basically saying that the entire cycling establishment of this country is corrupt? That every single one of the people named is bent?
For me, until some compelling evidence is presented, the balance of probabilities is against this
That isn't what I said at all. I simply said the scenario outlined is plausible, the idea that BC, Sky and Wiggins are entirely seperate entities is not a reflection of reality - the relationship between Team Sky and BC has long been incredibly close.
daily mail - the hub of journalism - not
Of course, it hasn't been said anywhere that the package was for Wiggins - that is left to our own imagination, skilfully encouraged by the DM.
Yes, lets pin it on Brad, he's target no1 at the moment, discredit him & Sky. Is it a media war, so the Dail Fail against the Murdoch empire that created Team Sky and spawned the biggest cycling revolution in this country by their very success.
I'm not niave enough to believe that Pro's do it on bread & water, but after the Lance era?
Tiernan Lock a credible witness? Bitter ex Pro who pissed it all away, who has an axe to grind with Sky & BC.
Trial by media, that's what's happening in the UK now, BBC are getting particuarly bad now in my view.
In a court of law you would have to have some good evidence to prove an offence, just stories with no fact wouldn't stand up to scrutiny.
So, the DM are reporting that UKAD are investigating various things released in the Russian leaks (which you would expect UKAD to do). I would rather hear this from UKAD than the DM.
The DM have also carried out there own investigations; having read the DM report I would suggest that it is they that appear to be clutching at straws. Creating their own exclusive angle following the original (newsworthy and widely covered) reports. Creating mischief, throwing shit hoping some will stick which of course some will. Nothing new there then from the DM.
Agreee.... thr flying out and returning the same day for a medical delivery though isnt the best image of clean sport though is it.
I think the doping control at the British nationals is pretty compelling circumstantial evidence at the moment that he didn't take anything. Of course he could have waited till after that race, but why then fly it out to him before hand? Seems quite likely that it wasn't meant for him and/or wasn't on a banned list in which case its non-news.
The article made it sound like Dave Brailsford was in full panic stations mode. If the package was nothing to be worried about, I would've thought he'd say:
a) nothing, and let the DM look stupid by not having anything to back it up
b) if it was something innocuous, just say oh it was just Rigo's hair gel or whatever it was
Instead he's given the reporter some bollocks about Emma Pooley, which the reporter proved to be false. It could turn out to be nothing but it'll be interesting to see.
We'd better get Lance on the blower and tell him he can have his seven Tours back then.
Grasping at straws somewhat ?
No chance. They won't have made this decision lightly.
Who? The Daily Mail?!
UKAD.
Your right, investigating one of the most well liked and well known sportsman this country has produced is not something done lightly.
However if they didn't do anything people would have thrown more wood on the fire saying they were covering it up. Its a no win situation for UKAD.
I still think its scaremongering by that well known supporter of the cycling fraternity, none other than the daily fail.