UK Anti-Doping boss critical of Team Sky
THE head of UK Anti-Doping has criticised Team Sky over their inability to prove what was in a package delivered to a team doctor during a 2011 race.
UKAD is investigating the package, intended for Bradley Wiggins during the 2011 Criterium du Dauphine (pictured, AFP), and Team Sky principal Dave Brailsford was grilled about it during a British parliamentary hearing last month.
He could only say that he had been told it contained a legal decongestant, Fluimucil, but in a BBC interview published on Saturday, outgoing UKAD chairman David Kenworthy said his evidence was underwhelming.
“What you had here was an incident which occurred in 2011 and the hearing was in December 2016, so five years ago people can remember a package that was delivered to France,” Kenworthy s ai d. “They can remember who asked for it, they can remember the route it took, who delivered i t , the times i t arrived.
“Everybody can remember this from five years ago, but nobody can remember what was in the package.ackage. That strikes me as extraordinary. xtraordinary. It’s very disappointppointi ng . We’re s t i l l continuing the he investigation.” ”
B r i t i s h Cycling presi- dent Bob How- den, the body’ss ethics commis- s i o n c h a i r George Gilbert rt and former Teamam Sky coach Shane ane Sutton were unable to divulgee the contents of the p a c k a g e whenh e n asked by British lawmakers.
Kenworthy said UKAD would continue to “dig and delve” until it found out what was in the package.
Froome ‘turned down TUE’
Team Sky and their former star rider Wiggins, who retired l a s t mo n t h , h a v e consisten consistently denied wrongdo wrongdoing. Britis British Cycling, whic which shares a M a n c h e s t e r h e a d q u a r t e r s with Team Sky, has saidsa it cannot comm comment while the UKAD investigationi is ongoing.ongo Meanwhile,Mean Britain’s tr triple Tour de France champion C Chris Froome d e c l i ne d a t he ra peut i c e x e m p t i o n u s e ( TUE) during the 2015 race because he didn’t think it was right morally, he told the BBC on Friday.
The 31-year-old Kenya-born rider’s revelation comes in the wake of hacked medical records showing his former Sky teammate Bradley Wiggins had been granted TUEs to take the banned anti-inflammatory drug triamcinolone before the 2011 and 2012 Tours de France, and the 2013 Giro d’Italia.
Froome, who did take TUEs twice previously to treat asthma prior to the key Tour de France lead-up, the 2013 Criterium Dauphine and the 2014 Tour de Romandie both of which he won, said he decided against accepting the TUE on the 2015 Tour de France as it didn’t sit well with him.
“I didn’t feel having a TUE in the last week of the Tour was something I was prepared to do,” he told the BBC. “It did not sit well morally wit h me.”
Froome, who i s eyei ng a rare Grand Tour double this year [the Tour de France and the Vuelta a Espana] hav ing fa iled in his attempt last season, said the World Anti-Doping Agency [WADA] could end t he debate about TUE’s by making t he rules surrounding t hem clearer.
“The fact that we’re having that debate about authenticity means there’s a problem with the system,” said Froome.
“I think WADA need to tighten their regulations around TUEs, so they’re not something that we question, their legitimacy. It’s not good for sport in general.
“The fact that we’re discussing the validity of results, that brings it back to the authorities, it is something they need to tighten up on so that there aren’t questions being asked anymore.”