Team Sky - including Dave Brailsford - have no evidence at all to back up their claim Fluimucil was delivered to the team. Dr Freeman failed to keep records and British Cycling had no policy on record keeping.
The head of the UK Anti Doping has given very damaging evidence about Team Sky during her appearance before a parliamentary committee hearing in London today.
Nicole Sapstead told the hearing there were no records at all to prove that an over the counter decongestant, as Team Sky had claimed, was in a jiffy bag brought from the UK to a race in France in 2011.
She said the doctor who too receipt of the medical bag after it arrived in France, Richard Freeman, had not uploaded the computer records of the delivery as he should have done.
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And he later reported that his laptop had been stolen.
“He did not do that, for one reason or another,” she said the failure to upload the records.
“And in 2014 we have been told, his laptop was stolen on holiday in Greece.”
Sapstead also said that while the team claimed Fluimucil – to be used in a nebuliser by Bradley Wiggins to break up mucus –was in the bag and had be taken from British Cycling stores in Manchester, the governing body had no record of ever having bought the medicine.
The bag was delivered to the team on the final stage of the 2011 Critérium du Dauphiné by British Cycling coach Simon Cope who had flown from the UK.
Nicole Sapstead appearing before the committee. The picture she painted of Team Sky and British Cycling was a world away from the marginal gains organisation that obsesses about every last detail.
Dave Brailsford late last year told the department of culture, media and sports anti-doping committee – which Sapstead was also appearing before today – that the bag brought to the team in France in 2011 contained Fluimucil, which is not banned and is an over the counter medicine.
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He conceded he was furnishing that information only on the word of Dr Freeman, who it is now confirmed has no records at all to support his testimony.
For his part, Wiggins has told UK Anti Doping that he took Fluimucil on the final stage of the Dauphiné, which he won overall, via a nebuliser. His account supports Freeman's.
Sapstead told the committee there were records of British Cycling having bought significant amounts of triamcinolone – the corticosteroid Wiggins had taken under TUE during his career.
The quantity purchased was “far more” than just for one rider, she added.
The UKAD chief also said it was “incredibly frustrating” for her agency to me frustrated by British Cycling invoking doctor-patient confidentiality during its investigation into what was in the bag brought to the Dauphiné.
Record keeping in Team Sky, British Cycling
Sapstead said the lack of records struck her as “odd”, especially within a team established with the specific aim of proving the biggest races could be won clean.
“I would expect, particularly for a professional road cycling team that was founded on the premise of exhibiting that road racing could be conducted cleanly, to have records that would be able to demonstrate any inferences to the contrary,” she said.
And she suggested the fact Team Sky and British Cycling overlapped until recent years made the investigation of what medicines were purchased and use even harder.
British Cycling appeared to have no policy on record keeping relating to medical interventions.
“It’s very clear from our investigation that there is no audit trail of what is going in and out of a comprehensive supply of medical products,” she said.
“We haven’t had an excuse from (British Cycling),” Sapstead said of records.
“There’s just an acknowledgement that there was no policy and no records. That’s it.
“Team Sky did have a policy. It’s just that not everybody was adhering to it.”
On the lack of record keeping by Dr Freeman, Sapstead said the general medical council in Britain may want to examine that issue.
Dr Freeman is currently ill and was unable to give evidence today. Simon Cope did appear and he reiterated what he had said previously; that he did not ask what was in the bag he was asked to transport to France because he trusted British Cycling.
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