Sport

Anti-doping chief in scathing attack on British Cycling and Team Sky

Nicole Sapstead highlights fact that no records were kept over medical package

Bradley Wiggins celebrates his win at the 2011 Critérium du Dauphiné. Photograph: Pascal Pavani/AFP/Getty Images

Peter Walker
Thu Mar 2 2017 - 08:43

British Cycling and Team Sky have no records at all to prove what was in a medical package carried to France for Bradley Wiggins at the end of the Critérium du Dauphiné race in 2011, the head of the UK’s anti-doping agency has told a committee of British MPs.

In hugely damaging evidence for the two closely linked organisations, Nicole Sapstead said the team doctor who received the mystery jiffy bag at the race failed to upload computer records as required, and later reported his laptop had been stolen on holiday.

Sapstead, the chief executive of UK Anti-Doping (Ukad), said Dr Richard Freeman could potentially face investigation by the General Medical Council (GMC) for his poor record-keeping.

She told the culture, media and sport committee that Freeman was the only person who claimed to know what was in the bag taken by a British Cycling coach, Simon Cope, from Manchester to France in June 2011.

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While Freeman said it was Fluimucil, a non-proscribed decongestant, Sapstead said there were no records of British Cycling ever purchasing the drug in the UK. It can be bought at pharmacies in France without a prescription.

In contrast, she told the MPs, the organisation had purchased significant amounts of triamcinolone, a corticosteroid only allowed under anti-doping rules by specific medical exemption, which Wiggins is known to have used in other cases.

Sapstead said Ukad had “met with a degree of resistance” in its investigation into potential doping at the Dauphiné, with British Cycling seeking to invoke the confidentiality of the doctor-patient relationship. “That’s incredibly frustrating for us as an organisation when we are trying to investigate something,” she said.

She agreed that the evidence her team had uncovered dealt a blow to the self-declared mission of Sky – which won the Tour de France in 2012 via Wiggins and has taken three more since with Chris Froome – to be demonstrably clean.

“It strikes me as odd, too, yes,” she said. “I would expect, particularly for a professional road cycling team that was founded on the premise of exhibiting that road racing could be conducted cleanly, to have records that would be able to demonstrate any inferences to the contrary.”

Freeman had also been due to give evidence to the committee, which is carrying out a wider investigation into doping in sport, but said he could not attend as he was ill.

Sapstead said Freeman was the only witness among 34 interviewed by Ukad in connection with the Dauphiné jiffy bag who said he knew what was inside it. Even the British Cycling physiotherapist who put the package together said he did not know.

In contravention of Sky policies, Freeman failed to upload medical records from the race to a communal database, Sapstead said. “He did not do that, for one reason or another, and in 2014 we have been told, his laptop was stolen on holiday in Greece,” she said. Such was Freeman’s poor record-keeping, the GMC would possibly want to investigate, she added.

Sapstead said Freeman’s dual role, with British Cycling and Sky, made keeping track of medical interventions all the harder. “It’s very clear from our investigation that there is no audit trail of what is going in and out of a comprehensive supply of medical products,” she said.

The two organisations even had different policies on keeping records of drugs, she said, with British Cycling appearing not to have any guidelines at all. “We haven’t had an excuse from them,” Sapstead said of the lack of drugs information. “There’s just an acknowledgement that there was no policy and no records. That’s it. Team Sky did have a policy. It’s just that not everybody was adhering to it.”

Wiggins himself told the Ukad investigation he had been treated with Fluimucil via a nebuliser on June 12th, the day the mystery package arrived in France, but did not know whether it had been inside the bag, Sapstead said.

While there was, she told the MPs, no evidence of any deliberate cover-up, there was equally “no record at all about what went into that package”, meaning British Cycling could not back up its assertions.

Team Sky said in a statement they had “co-operated fully with Ukad’s investigation and we will continue to do so. As we have said throughout, we are confident there has been no wrongdoing. Our commitment to anti-doping has been one of the founding principles of the team . . . We have worked hard to put the right governance structures in place.”

Separate revelations have shown Wiggins received three therapeutic use exemptions (TUE) on other occasions to have injections of triamcinolone to combat allergies. Sapstead said records showed British Cycling and Sky ordered “far more” triamcinolone than would be needed for one rider but that it was impossible to know how and when it was used.

Earlier in the session, Cope said he did not ask what was in the package he carried to France as he trusted his employers and wanted to keep his job. Cope said in retrospect he should have asked what was in the jiffy bag. “Why would I ask? I didn’t think anything was untoward,” he told the MPs. “It’s a national governing body – why would I question the integrity of our governing body?”

He told MPs he had been full-time coach for the British Cycling women’s academy until the end of 2010, but his role had shrunk and he ended up acting as a part-time “gap filler”.

He described being asked by Shane Sutton, who was technical director for British Cycling, to take a package from the organisation's Manchester office on a flight to Geneva, after which he was to drive to the end point of the Dauphiné race. Cope – who said he had been due to travel to France anyway to collect Sutton and some team bikes – said it was "not at all" unusual to run such errands. "It is normal in our world, yes," he said. "If you understand the sport we're in, people do unusual things like flying detergent to a race because one rider is allergic."

Asked if he was “the most overqualified delivery boy in history”, Cope said he had been trying to secure a permanent job. “I could well be,” he said. “But as I said earlier, I had a role in 2010 that was a full-time role, and I moved into a role which I could see, a few months down the line – which did happen – getting made redundant, as it wasn’t a full time job. So I was doing everything possible to keep people happy, to try and keep my job.”

He added: “I probably should have asked what was in the package. But as I said, at the time, I didn’t think it was untoward.”

(Guardian service)

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