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Wiggins: Armitstead has “no excuse” for missed tests

Says it’s ‘very difficult’ to go from two missed tests to three

Sir Bradley Wiggins insists Lizzie Armitstead has “no excuse” for the three missed drugs tests that nearly led to the road world champion being banned for two years in July.

News of the failed tests broke the week before the 27-year-old was due to ride the road race at Rio and overshadowed her preparations for the event.

She was only able to compete in Brazil, where she finished fifth, after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) overturned a ban imposed by UK Anti-Doping.

Speaking to the Guardian, Wiggins – who won the fifth Olympic gold medal of his career in Rio – said: “It’s bloody hard because what happens is you miss one test, they write you a letter, they ask you to explain what happened and you’ve got two weeks to put a case forward.

“If you ignore that and then you get another one, you end up having crisis meetings.”

He went on: “You get a lot of support from UK Sport. They’re brilliant, actually. They’re on the phone daily. They send you emails, reminders, they’ll put plans in place for you in terms of someone helping you with the whereabouts, so you don’t end up … well, it’s very difficult, then, to go from two to three. And to get three within eight or nine months, there’s no excuse.”

CAS held that the first of Armitstead’s missed tests, which happened in August last year, was not her fault.

It ruled that the anti-doping officer due to carry it out at the hotel in Sweden where she was staying with her Boels-Dolmens team should have made more of an effort to contact her when reception staff refused to give out her room number.

But some have queried why the rider from Otley waited to challenge that until the third strike, which could have jeopardised her participation at Rio, and her career, as well as how such a high profile rider could have put herself in such a position.

“When you’re a professional athlete and you’re a world champion, there’s no excuse, because it’s your career,” said Wiggins.

“You’re setting the standard for everybody else, and to say, ‘Cycling wasn’t my priority at that time’ is ludicrous, because you nearly lost your career over it. That’s just ridiculous. So I can’t fathom how that happened,” he added.

The comments are contained in a wide-ranging interview in tomorrow’s Guardian Weekend magazine with Wiggins, who is currently riding the Tour of Britain and will end his career at the Ghent Six in November.

There, he is likely to partner Mark Cavendish, who In an interview in Rio shortly before he began the omnium campaign that saw him win silver behind Italy’s Elia Viviani, also spoke out about the situation Armitstead found herself in.

> Cavendish: Armitstead “could have prevented chaos” over missed tests

Cavendish, who has himself missed an out-of-competition test in the past, said that while he did not believe Armitstead was doping, she was “absolutely” to blame for the what had happened.

"I think Lizzie herself could have prevented the chaos that she's in but I think she's done well to deal with it, get on her bike and show why she's world champion," he added.

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12 comments

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drosco | 7 years ago
1 like

Agree with Wiggins 100%. Thanks heavens she didn't win.

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Jem PT | 7 years ago
2 likes

Wiggins has never been my cup of tea, but I can't deny that he is spot on here.

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Leviathan | 7 years ago
1 like

I wonder why people keep suggesting Wiggo "knows nothing about it." He undoubtebly has a great deal of experience, if not more experience as a road and track athlete than anyone else. Reporters keep shoving microphones under his nose and asking him questions about anything in the sport, and he has to give a coherent response. He didn't say anything about her taking drugs. He has a clear point; if I was a clean athlete on one missed test, I would be petrified of another missed test and even the slightest suggestion of cheating. Look at Yates' recent short ban, even the most innocuous test results hang over you like a stench forever.

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gusstrang | 7 years ago
1 like

So Wiggo comments on something that he doesn't know the full facts on - it doesn't matter if he knows the way the doping system works or not... he doesn't know all of the facts so is not qualified to make a judgement, he can only have an opinion. His opinion may be right or wrong but unless Armistead reveals all her family issues then we won't know. Is your family more important than your career - it is a difficult call to make... Each of out values are different and at the end of the days she was within the rules. Never ruin a good story for the facts though....

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Judge dreadful | 7 years ago
0 likes

She is undoubtedly a shit for brains, but I doubt very much she's a doper. Just daft.

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Dan S | 7 years ago
1 like

He's kind of missing the point: she accepted the second and third (albeit claiming family issues for the third). It's the first that was the issue, and as far as we know she provided all the information required (but let's not get into that again).

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Colin Peyresourde replied to Dan S | 7 years ago
4 likes

Dan S wrote:

He's kind of missing the point: she accepted the second and third (albeit claiming family issues for the third). It's the first that was the issue, and as far as we know she provided all the information required (but let's not get into that again).

No. It's the fact that she missed three and then attacked the weakest point of the three to get herself off the hook. As Wiggins says, with two fails a third should not of happened.

You don't risk your career on an appeal to CAS. That's how you end up trying to convince people you have a conjoined twin living inside you.

Still I imagine the point is that she hadn't failed any tests instead. Much easier to argue your excuses that way. Still would like to hear any of her apologists come up with a single family emergency which would require her to miss something which her reputation and career relied on.

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Dan S replied to Colin Peyresourde | 7 years ago
0 likes
Colin Peyresourde]
<p>As Wiggins says, with two fails a third should not of happened.</p>[\quote]
No, it shouldn't. That, I suspect, is why she accepted it as a fail. That whole line of attack, saying that no family emergency could justify missing the test, is a straw man: everybody agrees that was a fail without valid excuse.

[quote wrote:

You don't risk your career on an appeal to CAS. That's how you end up trying to convince people you have a conjoined twin living inside you.

Again, I don't think anybody disputes the fact that she should have appealed the first one sooner.

Basically Wiggins is correct: the second was an obvious cock up and shows a pretty staggering lack of attention. The third is the same. Whatever the family emergency, CAS seem to have ruled (or she admitted) that it was insufficient to justify the failure. Both apparently pretty monumental errors.

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Jimnm | 7 years ago
0 likes

Where there is competition there will always be cheaters. Just my opinion  3

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handlebarcam | 7 years ago
2 likes

I'm not really interested in the opinion of professional cyclists. If they see, or can otherwise provide evidence of, their teammates engaging in doping, then they should rat them out to the authorities. But that has almost never happened, despite the gallons of EPO and blood that has apparently been sloshing around the pro peloton in the past few decades. I have no strong opinion on the Armistead case, but tittle-tattle like this is not the opposite of omerta, it's just idle speculation.

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The _Kaner | 7 years ago
1 like

..he's not wrong...

 

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psling replied to The _Kaner | 7 years ago
0 likes

The _Kaner wrote:

..he's not wrong...

 

Well, he is because she did make excuses...

But he is right in his opinion, in my opinion.

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