Comments made by Chris Froome to Paul Kimmage three years ago show Fluimucil was being used in recovery injections. To date the debate has centred on its use in nebulisers to clear mucus.
Comments Chris Froome made in a 2014 interview with journalist Paul Kimmage in The Sunday Independent suggest the substance Fluimucil was used by teams in injections to foster recovery.
When Dave Brailsford said last month before a UK parliamentary hearing that Fluimucil was in the jiffy bag delivered to Team Sky at the at Critérium du Dauphiné in 2011, he suggested it was used to clear mucus.
He was correct in stating that as the use for the medicine, which is not banned in competition.
And the media explained the substance by stating it was used in nebulisers to clear mucus by breaking it up.
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However, comments made by Froome in an interview with Kimmage in 2014 suggest the substance was also used in injection form to aid recovery, and not just for loosening mucus.
Froome said he had been given a substance in injection form that he believed was Fluimucil when he rode with Barloworld before emerging as the top rider he is today after moving to Team Sky.
He told Kimmage Barloworld had given him injections at times for recovery.
“On Barloworld they did do injectable . . . was it Fluimacil?” he is quoted as saying in the Kimmage interview in 2014.
“It was an amino acid or something and the doctor would administer that at certain points. And I did have some Fluimacil. I don’t know if I had it on the Tour but there were . . . it’s possible once or twice.”
He added of the team doctor who gave it to him: “Before he’d do it he would show it to me and say: ‘This is Fluimacil, an amino acid. It will help you to recover’.”
The comments have now been highlighted by William Fotheringham of The Guardian.
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He said he was pointing out Froome’s comments back in 2014 to show that Fluimucil was used in recovery, and not just to loosen mucus.
Froome used the substance for recovery in injection form at a time when injections were still legal in the sport of pro cycling.
However, in 2011 when Fluimucil was delivered to Team Sky in the ‘jiffy bag’ package, it could not have been administered via injection for recovery purposes because such injections had been banned by the UCI just one month earlier, in May 2011.
The restrictions aimed to take needles out of cycling culture, specifically when riders were recovering.
Under those restrictions, injections were only permitted in cases where they were “medically justified based on latest recognized scientific knowledge and evidence based medicine” and when no alternative treatment was available.
If injections were received outside of hospital treatment or a clinical examination the injection had to be reported to a UCI doctor by a team doctor.
If the rules were broken, a rider could be suspended for a period of between eight days and six months and a fine could also be imposed.
And if a second breach was detected, suspensions increased to between six months and life, with a fine of up to $200,000. And if the violation took place at a race the whole team could be excluded.
Last month Brailsford appeared before the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, which is part of the British parliament, to answer questions about the jiffy bag delivered to Team Sky in France in 2011.
It was for Dr Richard Freeman and was intended for use by Bradley Wiggins, who had won the Dauphine overall the day the delivery was made.
Brailsford said the bag contained Fluimucil and that the team’s Dr Freeman had informed him of that.
“Dr Freeman told me that it was Fluimucil that was in the package,” Brailsford said.
“(It is) a product which is for a nebuliser. And that’s what was in this package.”
He went on to speak generally of Fluimucil: “I believe it’s for loosening mucus. Quite often when the guys (have) tight chest or colds they’ll use a nebuliser; it’s a product you put in a nebuliser.”
British Cycling’s former technical director Shane Sutton told the same hearing the package was for Wiggins. And he believed it was for a health issue, possibly relating to a chest infection.
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