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Bradley Wiggins and Richard Freeman at 2011 Tour de France video still.PNGEx-Team Sky doctor in Bradley Wiggins Jiffy Bag probe to miss being grilled by MPs tomorrow due to illness
A former Team Sky doctor at the centre into the probe of a Jiffy Bag containing medicine couriered to the 2011 Criterium du Dauphiné and containing medicine for Sir Bradley Wiggins will miss a planned appearance before a House of Commons Select Committee tomorrow because he is too ill to attend.
Richard Freeman was due to have been grilled by members of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee as part of its investigation into doping in sport, but the Guardian reports that he emailed its chair, the MP Damian Collins, to say he was unable to appear due to illness.
UK Anti-doping (UKAD) chief executive Nicole Sapstead and former British Cycling coach Simon Cope, who delivered the package to Freeman at the race in the French Alps, flying from Gatwick to Geneva on the same day, are still due to testify at tomorrow’s oral evidence session, which starts at 2.00pm.
The hearing had originally been scheduled to take place on 22 February but was postponed since UKAD, which is also investigating the mystery package, asked for more time while it concluded its probe into “allegations of wrongdoing.”
According to the Guardian, a spokesperson for the committee has said that Freeman will be given “the option of supplying written evidence and [that it] may call him to appear when he’s well enough.”
Quoted on the Parliament.uk website, Folkestone and Hythe MP Collins said: “There is a considerable public interest in UKAD's investigation and it is also important to our inquiry into doping in sport to understand what they have been able to determine, and to understand the processes around controlled substances within sport.
“On 1st March there should be no reason not to have a full exposition of the facts on this case,” he added.
In December, Team Sky principal Sir Dave Brailsford told the committee that the package contained the decongestant Fluimucil, which is not a banned substance.
But Collins subsequently made it clear that he was not satisfied with that answer, highlighting that no paper trail appears to exist regarding the package or its contents.
> MP says British Cycling has no paper trail for Wiggins package
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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20 comments
Very damning on the triamcinolone.
Can't watch this right now but did sneak 20 secons there and yes, awkward, tesnse, dodge fest. If these guys aren't guilty of anything, they sure know how to act like it.
Dan Roan on twitter is summarising the juicy bits if you can't watch a stream of it
Perfect, cheers!
Sorry I clearly missed the Paragraph regarding the long time Zero Stance once touted by team Sky and their moral obligations.
the point being made was just because you can, doesn't mean you should. eg performance enchancing TUES and whatever other shennanigans. Didn't disgraced cyclist David Millar say that the Flumancil (insert real name here) Hayfever tablets were one of the most potent Performance substance he ever took, and he took a few.
Re Impunity, currently we have Ex Dopers commentating on TV, we have Monuments on Mountains commemorating dopers, then we have up and coming riders cast to the dogs, and potential some of the greatest riders of all time vilified and besmirched whilst others are currently bending the rules of Morality. It's still rife I mean who here would like to offer an straight up bet that this year not one rider will be face action over doping?
I simply don't understand how some are disgraced whislt others are clearly still riding, some riders who get a chip on their shoulder make it a lifes work to bring others down whislt the british public laud a hero who was clearly injecting stuff he morally shouldn't have.
I'm a complete cynic and I still think Lance should get all of his 7 titles back because he was simply the best at what everyone else was doing and by the looks of it still are doing.
For years I have said that sky were "doping" not in the traditional sense EPO etc but If the UCI/WADA say you are allowed 7.5mg of X sunstance in your blood you can bloody well guarantee their riders had 7.3mg of X in their blood. Marginal gains you see, I liken it to one of the key jobs in formula one is the Lawyers Scrutunising the rule book to see what their car designers can legitimately get away with.
It's Doping Jim just not as we know it.
Whether you put the word doping in " " or not then you are still wrong.
The rest of your paragraph quite clearly demonstrates this - if they act within the rules then thay are not doing anything wrong. You can question moral obligations, pressure put on riders et al but still can not accuse them of [insert speech marks] doping.
Alan, my old mucker, when you are going to split hairs about somebody's language then you need to get things right yourself.
Precisely, what is it you don't understand about the established fact that Wiggins is a doper and Team Sky are hypocritical, dishonest scum? (You will notice a lack of quote marks in my previous sentence, if things are not entirely clear to you).
Wiggins took performance enhancing drugs on more than one occasion before big races which he then went on to win. Meanwhile, Team Sky, headed up by the crooked sad sack of shit "Sir" Dave, were telling all and sundry how clean they were. Fact.
None of this would have come out if it wasn't for the Russians hacking the UK anti doping agency's servers.
Let's have an analogy shall we? If I score some smack off the street and take it, then I am a doper. If my company employs a crooked doctor, at vast expense, who prescribes me heroin, am I any less of a doper? I'd say no and in the 2nd case I'm actually in a far poorer position to occupy the moral high ground. Especially, if I've been saying how disgusting and disgraceful doping is; even though, in the first case, it's criminal conduct and in the 2nd case it's entirely legal.
I'm so sad to hear that Team Sky's doctor was unable to drag his bones in front of the commitee. I wonder if he's suffering from the same disease Dianne Abbot was the other week?
It seems to be typified by having some awkward business to deal with in the Palace of Westminster; then spending an afternoon in the local hostelry and subsequently crying off with a "migraine".
I feel sure I have identified a new communicable disease and it's just a matter of time before a richly deserved Nobel is mine.
It was also interesting to hear how the poor, unfortunate doctor had a mishap with his laptop whilst on holiday. Apparently, it got stolen and he lost any data he may have had regarding the jiffy bag "drop off". Despite it only taking less than 5 seconds for him to back-up the data to Dropbox and/or a USB memstick, it seems the data wasn't of sufficient importance to him.
I eagerly await for the Team Sky doctor to tell everybody that "the dog ate my homework" next.
One of the key roles in any entity is understanding the rules and how to abide by them. There's nothing inherently sinister in that.
So if you are caught doping should there be no punishment at all? Just let them walk away with impunity?
That just sounds daft.
For anyone so inclined, the committee will be streamed live - start time 2pm.
Linky: http://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/848600f4-b496-434b-90d4-8544753566d8
thank you - this is very, very uncomfortable viewing.
I really want to beleive them when they say that it was all above board and there is nothing to see here.
But they are making it harder and harder with the increasing smell of a large rodent.
Can the cycling media hacks now start using the term 'Disgraced cyclist Bradley Wiggins' or is it too soon?
I think they'd best wait until he's actually disgraced himself, to do so now would be jumping the gun somewhat.
Have you seen any of The Jump?
Nothing will come of this. It's not a criminal investigation , just a waste of time and effort. I'm not sure if you're even compelled to actually speak during this sort if thing. My mate had to attend an enquiry about a guy getting electrocuted and he said everyone said nothing.
MPs lining up the villains of the day and asking them awkward/silly questions is the glue that holds our democratic system together. Without that we might conclude that they don't actually get much done.
Do you think someone could take him some decongestant in an unmarked jiffy bag? That'd make him feel much better, I think...
Wanted to say something mature, but my mind is going, 'lol sure
'.