Bradley Wiggins was facing renewed questions on Friday night after it was alleged that Britain’s most successful Olympian committed a “whereabouts failure” in May – less than three months before he won gold in Rio.
Team Sky and Wiggins have been under pressure after his therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) became public knowledge, leaving the first British winner of the Tour de France open to accusations he had behaved unethically by injecting the powerful corticosteroid triamcinolone in 2011, 2012 and 2013, before his most important race of those seasons. They insist the TUEs were medically necessary to deal with a pollen allergy that aggravates Wiggins’ asthma condition.
That was followed by allegations of further wrongdoing which meant UK Anti-Doping has expanded its inquiry into British cycling after reports Team Sky and Wiggins are being investigated over the contents of a medical package. Team Sky have strongly denied those claims and reiterated their “100% commitment” to clean competition.
However, a report in the Daily Mail on Friday has now alleged that the 36-year-old, who is set to retire after next month's Six Days of Ghent race, provided insufficient information about where he would be after returning from the Tour of California. According to the report, Wiggins blamed the time difference and the fact it was an overnight flight but the incident was still marked down as a missed test – the third of his career after similar instances between 2005 and 2009. Under the World Anti-Doping Agency's rules athletes must provide a one-hour slot every day when a doping control officer can test them. An athlete who misses three tests in 12 months can be banned for up to two years.
The revelation is particularly embarrassing for Wiggins after he criticised his British team-mate Lizzie Deignan in September, then known by her maiden name Armitstead, saying there was “no excuse” for missing three doping tests in less than a year. “When you’re a professional athlete and you’re a world champion, there’s no excuse, because it’s your career,” he said. “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.
“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. You get a lot of support from UK Sport. They’re brilliant. 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 (missed tests). And to get three within eight or nine months, there’s no excuse.”
The three-time Tour de France winner, Chris Froome, also missed a test last year and blamed overzealous staff at an Italian hotel. Meanwhile the German sprinters Marcel Kittel and André Greipel both condemned the use of TUEs in cycling, with the former suggesting those who suffer from “bad asthma” should compete in the Paralympics.
(Guardian service)
