The_Guardian_-_2016-12-29

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The controversy around Bradley Wiggins’s therapeutic use exemptions seemed not exactly far away,
but certainly not immediate. Wiggins had received injections of the corticosteroid triamcinolone to
combat pollen allergies, taken just before major Tours in 2011, 2012 and 2013, but they were within
the rules and British Cycling seemed largely untouched by the questions that had thrown up.
Late on Thursday night and into Friday, however, there was a change of pace when it was revealed
that UK Anti-Doping had begun an investigation into “allegations of wrongdoing in cycling”, and it
was later confirmed that two members of Ukad staff attended a meeting with British Cycling on
Friday.
Ukad was keen to clarify that “at no point have Ukad ‘raided’ British Cycling or Team Sky”. The
meeting, Ukad stated, was with the full cooperation of British Cycling.
Wiggins stated early on Saturday through his official spokesman that “I welcome this investigation”
although he was not planning on expanding on that. Team Sky followed that up with a statement on
Saturday lunchtime that read: “Given some of the recent headlines we wanted to set out the facts.
Team Sky were recently contacted by the Daily Mail regarding an allegation of wrongdoing which we
strongly refute. We informed British Cycling and asked them to contact UK Anti-Doping. We
understand that Ukad are currently investigating this as you would expect.”
The investigation was not directly related to Wiggins’s TUEs, but instead followed the revelation that
a package containing “a medical substance” was delivered to Team Sky by a British Cycling coach,
Simon Cope – who is now the director sportif of Wiggins’s eponymous professional team – at the
Critérium du Dauphiné stage race in 2011 and that the recipient was the doctor responsible for
Wiggins’s TUE applications in 2011, 2012 and 2013, Richard Freeman, who is the British Cycling
team doctor. He will not travel to Qatar with the team for the world road race championships.
The Ukad investigation caps a period when immense success for British Cycling has been
accompanied by massive turbulence, beginning with the allegations of sexism and discrimination
against the technical director, Shane Sutton, which culminated in Sutton’s departure. An inquiry into
the background to this chain of events is still ongoing, although it is expected to report before the
British Cycling National Council meeting at the end of November. There is constant speculation about
Sutton’s possible return to the fold.
The Sutton debacle was followed by the dramatic news that the world champion Lizzie Armitstead
had come close to missing the Rio Olympic Games after registering three “strikes” on the ADAMS
system that monitors a cyclist’s whereabouts for random testing. Armitstead was cleared a few weeks
after her third “strike” when the court of arbitration for sport ruled that the first “strike” was not valid
as doping control officers had not made proper attempts to contact her, but it made for an
embarrassing run-in to the Olympic Games.
The pendulum swung the other way immediately with Armitstead almost forgotten by the time the
British topped the cycling medal table in Rio with twice as many medals as their closest competitor,
Holland. On the back of that, HSBC committed to backing the sport for eight years, replacing Sky as