Related News
UK Anti-Doping closes Sky ‘mystery package’ probe
Print Edition
No charges will be brought over the doping investigation that cast a cloud over the reputation of British cycling and Bradley Wiggins, the former Tour de France champion and the country’s most decorated Olympian.
But Britain’s anti-doping agency did express concern yesterday that its investigation was hampered by the failure to retain accurate medical records in a sport that prided itself on meticulous precision planning as the country became an Olympic superpower.
The case centered on the contents of a medical package dispatched from the shared British Cycling-Team Sky medical facility in Manchester to Wiggins at the 2011 Dauphine Libere race in France, a key pre-Tour race. It was couriered by a British Cycling employee despite Wiggins competing for Team Sky in the race, a year before winning the Tour de France.
Details about the package were leaked last year by the Daily Mail newspaper and it took months for Team Sky to disclose the contents of the package, eventually telling a parliamentary hearing in London it contained Fluimucil, a brand name for a legal decongestant containing acetylcysteine used for clearing mucus.
But there is no paper trail or written evidence of the treatment and the United Kingdom Anti-Doping Agency was investigating whether the substance was in fact the banned corticosteroid called triamcinolone. UKAD said yesterday that it “remains unable to confirm or refute the account that the package delivered to Team Sky contained Fluimucil”.
“Our investigation was hampered by a lack of accurate medical records being available at British Cycling,” UKAD chief executive Nicole Sapstead said. “This is a serious concern.”
Team Sky was established in 2009 by Dave Brailsford, the brains behind Britain’s 14 medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, with the target of producing the country’s first Tour champion — a feat accomplished by Wiggins in 2012. Team Sky’s Chris Froome, his former teammate, has won it four times since.
Brailsford held dual roles with the British Cycling governing body and the team sponsored by the Sky satellite broadcaster before stepping down from his performance director job at British Cycling in 2014.
A shared medical storage facility in Manchester is emblematic of the blurred lines between the two, supposedly separate entities, at the heart of the case that anti-doping investigators and legislators tried to untangle.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
