Lizzie Deignan says the UCI needs to examine the TUE system and has suggested a period away from racing after powerful drugs are taken under TUE (Photo: Sirotti)
Before trying to defend in Doha the world road title she won in the US last year, Lizzie Deignan called for the UCI to examine and overhaul the therapeutic use exemption (TUE) system.
Her call comes in the wake of revelations that Bradley Wiggins availed of TUEs just before the Tour de France in 2011 and 2012 and the Giro d’Italia in 2013.
Wiggins availed of injections of corticosteroid triamcinolone for pollen allergies.
He said his allergies were extreme and that using the TUE system simply enabled him to race in the way he would if he did not suffer from the allergies.
However, other pros and former pros pointed to the fact the drugs cause rapid weight loss and add to a rider’s power and expressed their belief they gave Wiggins an unfair advantage.
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The TUEs were sanctioned by the UCI and conducted within the rules.
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Deignan, who recently married Irish Team Sky pro Philip Deignan and changed her name from Armitstead, was herself involved in controversy recently when it emerged she had missed three out of competition tests.
However, she escaped a ban after successfully arguing that in the first case the tester had not tried sufficiently hard to contact her at a team hotel.
It meant the first incident could not be counted as a missed test, meaning no ban was applicable.
Now Deignan says the UCI clearly needs to examine the TUE issue.
“I think the UCI definitely need to clarify their rules, they need stricter rules,” Deignan told The Guardian newspaper
“You can’t say (corticosteroids) need to be totally banned, but (the UCI) need to look harder at them and have a longer period when riders are out of competition after an injection.”
Before news of Wiggins’s TUEs emerged, he had criticised Deignan over her case, saying there were no excuses for three missed test incidents.
However, in Doha Deignan declined to respond when asked about what Wiggins had said.
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