Sir Dave Brailsford has been accused of offering an incentive to the journalist who broke the story about the mystery package delivered to Bradley Wiggins to prevent it from being published.
The Daily Mail’s Matt Lawton claimed last night that Team Sky’s principal was so concerned about the controversy that he offered him a “more positive story” instead and later said to him: “If you didn’t write the story, is there anything else that could be done?”
The newspaper also said that Brailsford feared that the story could mark “the end of Team Sky”.
It comes after Brailsford claimed in parliament yesterday that the package contained a legal medicine, but his answer — finally coming more than two months after initial questioning — created more confusion.
A lengthy evidence session at the culture, media and sport select committee threw up as many questions as answers after MPs grilled Team Sky and British Cycling executives over the package delivered to the team’s doctor in 2011.
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Brailsford said he had been told by the doctor, Richard Freeman, that the package at the centre of an anti-doping investigation contained Fluimucil, an over-the-counter decongestant used in nebulisers for clearing mucus.
It is unclear whether British Cycling has a paper or electronic record of the drug being sent, but Shane Sutton, who was head coach at the time, and British Cycling’s chairman, Bob Howden, and ethics chief, George Gilbert, all said that they have no detailed knowledge of the package’s contents.
Significantly, Sutton, who went on to become technical director of British Cycling, confirmed for the first time that the package did contain medication and that Freeman had administered the contents to Wiggins after the end of the Critérium du Dauphiné in June 2011, which the British cyclist won.
“I believe he administered the medication,” Sutton said. “It was a medical supply he delivered.”
Sutton revealed that he had authorised and arranged the delivery, but did not know what it was for or if the medication had been administered via injection. “I have no knowledge what was in the package,” he said. “I didn’t see it wrapped. It was a request from the doctor and I authorised it.
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“The doctor asked me if I knew of anyone coming down logistically who could deliver some stuff.”
It is understood that UK Anti-Doping (Ukad) has yet to be presented with incontrovertible paper evidence of what was in the package.
British Cycling has promised to write to the select committee to confirm its contents, but questions remain over why none of those in charge of the governing body, and neither Sutton nor Brailsford, knew what was being delivered at the time.
There are also questions over why Fluimucil would be given to Wiggins when the medical advice is that it should normally not be given to asthmatics. Howden and Gilbert were also challenged by MPs as to why Simon Cope, the British Cycling coach who carried the package from Manchester to Geneva, was expected to take it through custom without having any idea of the contents.
“I have no knowledge what was in the package. I didn’t see it wrappedShane Sutton
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Other questions have been thrown up surrounding Cope’s involvement. Brailsford said that the coach was coming to France anyway to help with the logistics of moving the team to another venue in northern Italy.
“He was coming and he was asked to bring something from the doctor’s store,” he said. How he was involved in the logistics remains unclear, as Sutton told the committee that he shared a car back to Geneva airport after Cope had made the delivery.
In another apparent lack of clarity, Sutton said that Wiggins was treated at the Dauphiné “for a long-term illness” and then said he had “been struggling a little bit” in the final three days of the race by something that “could have been a chest infection”.
Brailsford said Fluimucil “is a drug we’ve used on a regular basis” and that “we restock when appropriate”. He told MPs: “Dr Freeman told me it was Fluimucil for a nebuliser.” Brailsford did not say, however, whether Wiggins had been given the contents of the package.
Leaked World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) documents revealed in September that Wiggins was granted therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) — allowing athletes to use otherwise banned medicine — to use the powerful corticosteroid triamcinolone before three major races in 2011, 2012 and 2013, including his 2012 Tour de France win.
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The package was delivered in June 2011, a few weeks before Wiggins’s first TUE, before the Tour de France.
Brailsford admitted that he should have handled the inquest into the case better after providing inaccurate information to a reporter suggesting Cope, a women’s coach, had been going to France to visit British rider Emma Pooley. It turned out that she was competing in Spain at the time, hundreds of miles from where Cope handed the package to Freeman.
When asked if there was any documentation to support Freeman saying it was Fluimucil, Brailsford said it was his “understanding” that Wiggins has made his medical records available to Ukad, which is still investigating.
Sutton also launched a furious denunciation of those questioning the case. He said: “You sitting there, being British, should be embracing the success they’ve achieved and how they’ve achieved it, rather than looking for something that’s not there.”
In the final session, Olivier Niggli, the director general of Wada, said that “potentially there is some concern” about athletes abusing corticosteroids.
