Olympic cycling champion Nicole Cooke has delivered a damning assessment of Sir Bradley Wiggins and Team Sky, and their use of medical exemptions to take banned substances.
The 2008 road race winner described their use of exemptions as ‘disturbing’ and claimed she is ‘sceptical’ about their explanations.
In explosive testimony to a parliamentary select committee on Tuesday, Cooke also tore into cycling’s governing bodies, the anti- doping authorities and UK Sport.
Speaking to MPs from Paris via video link, Cooke’s evisceration of some of the most prominent figures in British sport included claims that:
* There is a culture of sexism in her sport and British Cycling has been run ‘by men, for men’.
* UK Sport has failed to hold to account former British Cycling bosses like Sir Dave Brailsford, Shane Sutton and Brian Cookson.
* Anti-doping measures are ineffective because of ‘the wrong people fighting the wrong war, in the wrong way, with the wrong tools’.
* UK Anti-Doping are reluctant to investigate doping allegations and hold a ‘chocolate sword’ in terms of their investigative powers.
* The Therapeutic Use Exemption system can be ‘a very convenient way to mask a doping programme’.
Damian Collins, chairman of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport select committee investigating doping in sport, described Cooke’s evidence as ‘truly shocking’.
Much of the discussion on Tuesday focused on Wiggins, his use of a powerful corticosteroid,
triamcinolone, and the jiffy bag controversy that remains at the centre of a UK Anti-Doping investigation.
Russian hackers revealed that Wiggins had taken triamcinolone before his last three Grand Tours, including the 2012 Tour de France he won. Wiggins has since claimed he needed the drug to treat asthma and allergies and has done nothing wrong.
Questions also remain over the delivery of a medical package for Wiggins at the end of the 2011 Criterium du Dauphine, with Sky arranging for British Cycling coach Simon Cope to travel from the UK to France with a decongestant that experts insist could have been sourced locally in France.
It also emerged that Wiggins had to wait at least four days to be treated for the illness from which he was said to be suffering.
Cooke said she, too, had obtained medical exemptions on three occasions to use triamcinolone, or Kenacort as it is known commercially, in her career to treat a knee injury.
On Wiggins’s use of the drug, she said: ‘What I find disturbing in that case (with Wiggins) is the chronological coincidence that this is used just before major targets of the racing season. I am sceptical based on these coincidences.’
Cope, as this newspaper first revealed, delivered the package for Wiggins. At the time he was the elite women’s endurance coach at British Cycling. Asked about Cope running errands for Sky, and the cosy relationship that existed when Brailsford and Sutton were running both Sky and British Cycling, Cooke said: ‘I do find it very surprising that if Simon Cope is transporting something internationally, going on an aeroplane, that he didn’t know what he was transporting.
‘I find that astonishing. And the fact that British Cycling, when asked for the records of something they had stored apparently in their building, weren’t able to acquire the documentation of that, I find that surprising too.’
Was it also ‘out of character’, Cooke was asked. She said it was consistent with an organisation led by then CEO Ian Drake, who last year claimed to the BBC that he was unaware Sutton was still ‘employed by Team Sky’ when he was British Cycling’s technical director.
Cooke was asked if Sky could still claim to be the cleanest team. ‘Dave Brailsford not knowing what the riders were treated with definitely makes it hard to back up that claim,’ she said. ‘I think as well the chronological coincidence of the TUEs just before major events also raises suspicions, based on my experience of ways that I’ve seen other riders try and beat the system.
‘It makes me sceptical. I don’t have the medical knowledge to make an informed decision, but based on my experience I am sceptical.’
Cooke says she has been left consistently frustrated by her calls for UK Anti-Doping to investigate evidence of doping she claims to have presented to officials.
‘I have no faith in the actions of investigations conducted by UKAD or the testing they conduct, both completed at significant expense to the public purse,’ she said.
‘I have twice presented personal evidence to the agency in the UK responsible for anti–doping. In the first case they stated they would not do anything with my evidence. On the second they took no notes during the meeting and informed me I could not be given any information as to how they might process the evidence I gave them. My belief, based on the lack of action I observed, is that they did nothing at all on that second occasion either.’
The culture in British Cycling will be scrutinised in an independent UK Sport report following claims of discrimination and bullying by track cyclist Jess Varnish to this newspaper, and others since, that led to the resignation of Sutton last April. The report is due next month.
Cooke says there was an unfair focus on the men to the detriment of female riders, and also complained of inequality in the sport regarding prize-money.
In her written statement Cooke said: ‘I summarise that as a sport run by men, for men. I have attempted to achieve redress on a number of occasions but have encountered a governance structure at the national federation — British Cycling — that is not responsible to anyone other than itself for its own actions. The oversight that should be in place via UK Sport is, at best, token.’
On Tuesday she added: ‘They had got to the point where they could do what they wanted and they were used to prioritising their own personal projects and acting out of favouritism and not treating all the programmes equally within the world-class performance plan as they should have done.
Wiggins celebrates winning the men's madison final at the UCI World Track Cycling Championships in London. Photo: Matthew Childs/Reuters
‘There wasn’t the accountability from UK Sport to keep them in check. The board and CEO of British Cycling weren’t keeping the management of the world-class performance plan in check either.’
British Cycling and UK Sport might argue that the women have been every bit as successful as the men. Since 2008, British women have secured 62 Olympic and World Championship medals, compared to 63 for the men - when the men have had 14 more events.
In an astonishing interview with Sportsmail last April, Varnish made a series of allegations against Sutton. An internal investigation concluded that the Australian had used ‘inappropriate and discriminatory language’ but eight of Varnish’s complaints were not upheld. Cooke said she was sceptical.
‘I do question the investigation... it was conducted internally by British Cycling, so the conflict of interest and the sexism was there in that investigation,’ she said.
Cooke added that Sutton ‘certainly wasn’t suitable for the role as a senior coach at British Cycling’. Many riders, Sir Chris Hoy among them, were vocal in their support of Sutton last year but Cooke said: ‘While he does have an understanding of cycling, it isn’t a role to look after his mates, have his favourites and make decisions in an arbitrary and capricious manner. There is a lot more that is required to be in that position and Shane didn’t have that.’
Cooke was then asked if ‘British Cycling sees you less of a great champion and more of a troublemaker’.
‘Well, their president calls me difficult to the press, so undoubtedly I was a troublemaker for them,’ she replied.
Collins said: ‘The evidence Nicole Cooke gave regarding what she clearly believes is very strong discrimination against women in British Cycling is shocking.
‘And I think it poses questions for UK Sport too because they are supposed to be the dispassionate funders of elite sport.
‘There has been a lack of focus in women’s cycling which may have cost Team GB medals.’
Collins said further hearings are planned with a desire to return to the jiffy bag. ‘We’d like to do that in association with UKAD closing their investigation, so that gives us the ability to talk to other witnesses they have called,’ he added.