British cycling great Bradley Wiggins said it was “so sad” after he and his former team were accused by British lawmakers of manipulating drug rules before major races, including Wiggins’ 2012 Tour de France victory.
A report by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee of the House of Commons published yesterday accused Wiggins and other Team Sky riders of using the drug triamcinolone not for its recognized purpose as an asthma treatment, but because it helped them lose weight without compromising their power in the saddle.
Russian computer hackers revealed three years ago that Wiggins had applied for a therapeutic use exemption (TUE), which allows a rider to have injections of otherwise banned drugs, permitting him to take the powerful corticosteroid.
UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) launched an inquiry in September 2016 after British newspaper the Daily Mail reported a mystery package meant for the now-retired Wiggins had been delivered to Team Sky during a 2011 race in France.
It was alleged the package in question contained triamcinolone, but Wiggins’ then-doctor Richard Freeman insisted it was the decongestant fluimucil, a legal substance.
Freeman revealed he had lost a lone written record confirming this when his laptop was stolen while he was on holiday and after more than a year UKAD dropped its investigation, saying it had been hampered by a lack of “contemporaneous evidence,” but the parliamentary report, citing new evidence from an unnamed source, as well Freeman and Wiggins’ former coach Shane Sutton, dismissed the legal decongestant defense and said Sky, which had made much of its commitment to be drug free in a sport long tainted by doping scandals, had broken its own in-house rules.
Australian coach Sutton, who quit as the performance director of British Cycling in the buildup to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics following an unrelated sexism row, told the committee that “what Brad was doing was unethical, but not against the rules.”
“We believe this powerful corticosteroid was being used to prepare Bradley Wiggins, and possibly other riders supporting him, for the Tour de France,” the report said. “The purpose of this was not to treat medical need, but to improve his power-to-weight ratio ahead of the race.”
“The application for the TUE... also meant he benefited from the performance-enhancing properties of this drug during the race,” the report added, before turning to Team Sky founder Dave Brailsford.
“This does not constitute a violation of the WADA code, but it does cross the ethical line that David Brailsford says he himself drew for Team Sky,” it said.
However, 37-year-old Wiggins, a five-time Olympic gold medalist, said in a statement: “I find it so sad that accusations can be made, where people can be accused of things they have never done which are then regarded as facts.”
“I strongly refute the claim that any drug was used without medical need. I hope to have my say in the next few days and put to my side across,” he added.
His comments were backed by Team Sky, who said they were “surprised and disappointed” the committee had chosen to present an anonymous claim in this way.
One thing the various inquiries did uncover was the extent of the close relationship between Team Sky and Brailsford’s old employers at British Cycling, where he initiated the program that led to a slew of Olympic medals.
British Cycling chief executive Julie Harrington said the report was “thorough and timely.”
“Never again will we allow a situation to develop whereby our independence as the national governing body is called into question because of our relationship with a professional team,” she added in a reference to Team Sky.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier