David Walsh, right, on the Tour with Dave Brailsford, the head man at Team Sky. Walsh says the team has been left disappointed over TUEs issued to Bradley Wiggins (Pete Goding Photography)
Having defended Team Sky against allegations about the performances of its riders in the past, journalist David Walsh has suggested key management figures at the team were not aware of the TUEs Bradley Wiggins had applied for in 2011, 2012 and 2013.
And he says in his Sunday Times column today the team was now left disappointed by Wiggins's TUEs, adding the British riders still on the roster felt most passionately about anti doping.
He believes it would be hard to believe any of those British riders in the team would take the same triamcinolone intramuscular injection just before a major race like the Tour, as Wiggins did.
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Wiggins broke no rules but his availing of TUEs is seen as controversial because their detail was never known about until last week and because of the moral stance Team Sky has taken about how it says its riders prepare for racing.
Walsh describes people on the management side as “good characters”, adding the team’s silence since Wiggins’s “questionable” TUEs emerged was in an effort to “not say anything that might make a bad situation worse”.
Walsh continues: “Deeper, though, than the instinct to stick together will be the disappointment and the feeling of having been let down.
"How could Wiggins have been put on powerful medication before the Tour de France in 2011 and 2012 with virtually none of them in the loop?”
(The TUEs were applied for by Team Sky. Specifically, team doctor Richard Freeman’s name was on the applications just before the Tours de France in both 2011 and 2012.)
Walsh says Wiggins’s unnamed spokesman insisting there was “nothing new” in the rider’s TUE details leaked by Russian Fancy Bears hacking team was “laughable” – a point most will agree with.
He also points to the fact that Wiggins did not need such power medicines under TUE in 2009 when he was 4th in the Tour; a period during which his TUEs were for asthma inhalers that TUEs are no longer even required for.
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And Walsh also questions the credibility of the 2011 and 2012 TUEs by pointing out Wiggins won the 2014 Tour of California in the “hay fever season” there, yet no TUE was needed.
And then Walsh gets to the nub of his argument, that the finger of accusation really only points at Wiggins and Freeman rather than team principal Dave Brailsford and the other “good characters” in the team’s management.
Those he names as the “good characters” are: head mechanic Gary Blem, carers David Rozman, Marko Dzalo, Mario Pafundi, head off performance Tim Kerrison, head of operations Rod Ellingworth and directeur sportif Nico Portal.
He notes there has been silence from the team, apart from a bland statement saying it adhered to all TUE rules, but that Brailsford will have questions to answer when he finally speaks.
But Walsh suggests the questions will be about the behaviour of others.
“When he decides to speak publicly, Brailsford has questions to answer,” writes Walsh.
“There were doctors inside the team who believed Freeman was too quick to apply for TUEs.
“According to the then head of the medical team, Steve Peters, the controversial Belgian doctor Geert Leinders complained about a TUE granted to the Colombian rider Rigoberto Uran during the 2011 Criterium du Dauphine.
“It was Freeman who applied for that TUE. Other doctors in the team had reservations. Brailsford was aware of their concerns.
“Fellow riders did not know about Wiggins’s TUEs and it would be a surprise if key personnel such as Kerrison, Ellingworth and Portal knew,” he said, adding there was no evidence of any other rider in the team receiving a triamcinolone intramuscular injection just before the Tours.
Walsh continues: “It is the British riders in Sky who are the most passionately anti doping: (Chris) Froome, Ian Stannard, Geraint Thomas, Luke Rowe and Ben Swift. It is hard to believe any would have agreed to an intramuscular injection of triamcinolone at such a time.”
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