David Walsh said while he may have been duped by Team Sky, he made lots of contacts during his time with the team and Dave Brailsford will regret inviting him in.
David Walsh said while he was duped by Team Sky during the period he spent time with the team and wrote stories and a book on them he had made lots of contacts in the team and had no misgivings about his experience with the WorldTour outfit.
Walsh pointed out the biggest negative story about the British team before the controversy over Bradley Wiggins’s TUEs in the last couple of weeks was when former Team Sky rider Jonathan Tiernan Locke was caught for doping.
He broke that story then because his contacts in the team spoke to him and they were still doing it today.
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The Sunday Times journalist said, for example, that he had reported how some doctors inside Team Sky had misgivings about the TUEs being applied for and that team principal Dave Brailsford knew about the misgivings and still did not stop the TUE applications.
Walsh believes that fact now presentes problems for Team Sky, adding Brailsford would regret the day he ever invited him into the team.
Paul Kimmage had first been offered access to the team, including living with them for short periods on the road, but that access was withdrawn after a period.
The offer was later extended to Walsh, who took it up in 2013. He wrote a series of pieces in The Sunday Times and the ‘Inside Team Sky’ book in which he gave the team a clean bill of health.
However, faced with suggestions now he had been duped or used by the team – which like the Sunday Times is part of the Rupert Murdoch media empire – Walsh said it was not new that journalists were not always told the truth.
When spending time with the team he spoke to “many people about therapeutic use exemptions”, he told Off The Ball on Newstalk last evening.
“I was told ‘these are the numbers’. And the numbers really are quite insignificant. Sky have put it out at the weekend that they’ve had 13 therapeutic use exemptions in seven years in the peloton. That’s less than two a year.
“And when you consider they’d have a rider roster of somewhere between 26 and 30 that means very few riders get (TUEs). And in a way that throws you off the scent because you think ‘oh, that’s not very much’.
“But what you don’t know, because they will say ‘medical confidentiality precludes us from telling you who got what’... So I didn’t know who got what.
"I certainly didn’t know Bradley Wiggins got those three TUEs in the lead up to his biggest races in 2011, 2012 and 2013; I didn’t know that.
“So I could easily castigate myself for that and I could easily say that Sky duped me. And to a certain degree they may have. But I can tell you; there were very few people inside the team who knew Bradley Wiggins got that.
“I discovered that the doctor who applied for the authorisation to use this injection was Dr Richard Freeman, so he certainly knew. And he was the one who gave the injection I believe in all three cases.”
Walsh also said it was certain Brailsford knew of the TUEs for Wiggins.
Asked on Off The Ball on Newstalk whether Team Sky “duped you or used you” Walsh said:
“Did Sky dupe me? Yes probably, if dupe means... If I had asked David Brailsford in the middle of 2013 ‘Dave have you ever given a team leader...’;
“Now, it would have been an unusual question, I probably would had to have some inside information... ‘Have you ever given your team leader a pretty potent TUE just before the start of the Tour de France?’
“I’m not sure I would have been told the truth. And in that respect I didn’t get the full story. Was I duped? Yes, perhaps I was.
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“From my point of view, how do I feel about that? I feel that I got a lot of contacts in Team Sky.
“I’ve read the stuff that’s been written about this story. I feel I’m in a better position to write about this because of the contacts I made.
“So I have no real misgivings about it because I still feel I can write it. I know that the biggest story to come out before Sky in the negative sense before this story was; they had a rider Jonathan Tiernan Locke who tested positive.
“I was the guy who broke that story. I broke that story because I had contacts inside the team who told me, even though it was a damaging story.
“There will always be people who feel that 'even though I’m part of the team, this isn’t right'. And they will talk to journalists and that’s what happened. And it’s still happening today.”
Earlier yesterday when speaking to broadcaster John Murray on RTE Radio 1, he was asked did he feel “duped, hoodwinked” by what had been revealed now about the TUEs at Team Sky. Walsh replied in the negative.
“I don’t feel I was hoodwinked. If you’re asking me was David Brailsford incredibly forthcoming in telling me everything that was going on; no he didn’t.
“But he didn’t tell Bradley Wiggins’s chief rival in that Tour de France, who was another Team Sky rider Chris Froome; he knew nothing about Bradley Wiggins’s TUE injection.
“My belief is that four, maybe five people in a very big team would have known what was going on. I don’t believe there’s one of Bradley Wiggins’s team mates that knew.
“I know there are very important people in that team who didn’t know that this exemption was being applied for and got.
“So the fact that I didn’t know; it is not that big a deal. There’s plenty of people who were much closer to the centre of power in Team Sky who didn’t know and are feeling let down today.”
Murray also put to him that he had been reassured by a member of the team that when it came to debatable applications for TUEs the team would prefer not to apply for one and just to accept that the person had bad hay fever or any other ailment.
“Absolutely yeah, the head of the medical team Dr Steven Peters, who is actually a forensic psychiatrist; Steve Peters was telling me they had a view for pollen related stuff they didn’t give riders TUEs in races because they didn’t think that was justified, they would rather pull the rider out of the race.
“Bradley Wiggins got his TUE just before the race but to me that’s pretty much the same thing because he was riding the race with the effects, the benefits of that.
“The thing about journalists; when you go asking people questions it’s not certain they are going to tell you the truth. I don’t think there’s any revelation in that.
“Was I lied to at different times? Yes I was. Now I’m in a position because I spent that time in Team Sky; that I got to know a lot of people.
“I feel I have a better grip on this story than pretty much any journalist out there. And I think Dave Brailsford will regret the day he invited me into the team.”
Walsh said Wiggins’s interview with Andrew Marr was frustrating and that the interviewer clearly did not know enough about TUEs.
Wiggins got an “easy ride” and Wiggins had not satisfied anyone with his explanations for the pre-Tour and pre-Giro injections under TUE.
Walsh pointed out in relation to the 2012 injection just before the Tour he won that Wiggins had won his tune up events and had said himself he was very fit and healthy and had barely missed one day’s training.
Against that backdrop, he questioned why Wiggins would need such a powerful drug on the eve of the Tour.
“To me the story stinks and it’s going to leave Bradley Wiggins with a little cloud over his achievement of being the first British rider to win the Tour de France.”
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