Sky TUE saga. Is it some sort of witch hunt?

In the latest Cycling Podcast, Richard Moore talks to a few riders and a French journalist. They all seem to think it’s a witch hunt, and is blowing a small issue out of all proportion. Richard Moore also seems less reasonable, desperately digging for any dirt he can find. But I do understand that if it was eventually proved that real doping was going on, he’d look pretty stupid if he hadn’t been seen to be asking the difficult questions.

EDIT: scrub that!

French journalist. They all seem to think it’s a witch hunt, and is blowing a small issue out of all proportion.

An ex-Sky rider (Porte) and an ex-Sky rider and now current Sky DS (Portal). Not particularly independent. The journalist Francois Thomazeau explains French disinterest by comparing it to Festina and the bad old days, and his personal standpoint is that TUE abuse is purely a legal, and not an ethical issue.

desperately digging for any dirt he can find

damned if they do and damned if they don’t. BITD journos were criticised for being part of the conspiracy, now Walsh has lost all his crusader credibility by seeming to miss all the shenanigans whilst he was embedded with them, so now pushing and asking questions is either being part of a witch hunt or “desperately digging for dirt” 🙄

Well I thought Porte was pretty open and honest on the subject.

What did he say? Something like “they’ve maybe been a little bit cheeky with the TUEs”?

That’s seems to be about the size of it.

Uci involved now too:
team-sky-faces-uci-investigation-possible-cover-up

Latest sky interview 😉

Brilliant.

(Love that video anyway but that’s a great job)

@andylc – regarding how triamcinolone can be performance enhancing

Does seema bit weird but then most folk on highish doses of steroids aren’t endurance athletes training & racing at unbelievably high levels. There’s evidence to suggest that steroids somehow mobilise fat (see buffalo-humps for example). Who’s to say that those mobilised fats are handled the same way by an athlete’s body as they are by a mobility-reduced biddy with COPD or whatever. There’s also some fat in muscle, (perhaps especially in the same biddies but also even in athletes) and so mobilising that might lead to shrinkage of “muscles” without necessarily losing myocytes ?

/speculation

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/mar/25/bradley-wiggins-doping-worst-thing-to-be-accused-of-for-a-man-of-my-integrity

So marginal gains were rubbish?!? Ok, so what is it then that makes Sky so successful…?

motors in the seat tube obvs.

Hmm.. more leaks[/url].. Team Sky accused of violating UCI no-needles policy with IV recovery

Sky employing the ex-Phonak doctor??? 2011…

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/apr/13/ukad-team-sky-breached-no-needles-allegation?

Ho ho ho…

http://road.cc/content/news/221406-new-drink-driving-ban-jonathan-tiernan-locke

What a ****.

http://www.eurosport.co.uk/cycling/british-cycling-calls-july-egm-with-drastic-changes-to-the-board-on-the-agenda_sto6202554/story.shtml

“No charges over jiffy bag”.

Wiggo is furious and thinks everyone was jolly unfair and there are questions to be answered.

He still says nothing about the triamcimalone though.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/nov/15/team-sky-british-cycling-no-doping-charges-jiffy-bag

Well considering there was no evidence of anything illegal in the jiffy bag. And no real evidence that Wiggins has ever “illegally” taken PED’s, it’s no suprise no chargers have been brought. Wiggo being lived, well he’ll get over it.

I wonder if his asthma has cleared up since he retired.

In the statement, Sapstead insisted that Ukad’s investigation had been “thorough and extensive”. The head of Ukad added: “Our investigation was hampered by a lack of accurate medical records being available at British Cycling.

“This is a serious concern. In this case the matter was further complicated by the crossover between personnel at British Cycling and Team Sky. We have referred some information to the GMC, and will cooperate with the GMC as necessary in respect of that information.”

Ukad’s efforts to get to the truth were hindered by Dr Richard Freeman, the British Cycling doctor who administered the package, being unable to give evidence to the inquiry, citing ill health.

Lack of proof is not proof of innocence….

Yes, Wiggo was dangerously close to Lance “never tested positive” territory with his statement.

He should know better. I guess he’s bitter cos he thought it was ok to play the system – perhaps with BC guidance – but now feels he’s been betrayed by public opinion.

Sutton basically admits the TUEs were doping but within the rules as he got tame doctors to sign them off

Sir Bradley Wiggins’s former coach Shane Sutton has told a BBC documentary that he regarded therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) as a legitimate way of finding “marginal gains” while staying within anti-doping rules.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/nov/18/shane-sutton-bradley-wiggins-tues

An unsurprising insight into Sutton’s view on it there. If you can do something that gives you an edge and doesn’t explicitly break the rules (even if most would see it as gaming the rules) then it’s all ok.

An unsurprising statement from Wiggins too claiming some sort of vindication where the verdict is actually pretty damning of BC processes and inconclusive. Attack the whistleblower is something we’ve seen all too often though it would be good to have more clarity around the actual accusations.

Sir Bradley Wiggins’s former coach Shane Sutton has told a BBC documentary that he regarded therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) as a legitimate way of finding “marginal gains” while staying within anti-doping rules.

Hardly the intended theraputic use in that case is it? Morally cheating but not legally cheating. Pro road racing has hardly changed, they’re just more subtle with PEDs now. The no needles, whistle-clean team are at it in any way they can as long as the records can be lost or they can say it’s a grey area and Froome’s efforts if clean are tainted by association.

There’s two issues here for me:

The legal side, if they’ve operated within the rules, then that’s the end of it, nothing to discuss.

However, the moral/ethical side was a big claim for team Sky, and this is something they should be held accountable for.

Pro road racing has hardly changed, they’re just more subtle with PEDs now.

Just to be pedantic, it’s not ‘now’, it was six years ago. Since then the number of TUEs issued in elite cycling has fallen drastically, so I’d be a little wary of using 2011 events to paint a picture of the current situation.

For context, some of those will have been issued in extreme circumstances when riders undergo emergency operations – Luke Rowe after he shattered his leg recently for example – when the anaesthetics, pain killers etc breach doping regs but are clearly needed.

Just providing some context.

This isn’t really any different to the Paradise paper issues, is it? If the loopholes exist, people will use them. Marginal gains, financially or performance related, are still gains, so those with an absence of a good mroal/ethical nature will jump all over it. It’s disappointing, but not surprising.

Marginal gains, financially or performance related, are still gains, so those with an absence of a good mroal/ethical nature will jump all over it. It’s disappointing, but not surprising.

It is different because essentially elite sport is still just a glorified entertainment except for the people directly involved in it. Ultimately it doesn’t really matter, unless you believe that sport somehow sets a moral and ethical tone for an entire society, in which case we’re in trouble.

The idea that it really ‘matters’ is a conceit perpetrated by sports journalists, who have to pretend it matters to carry on writing about it wth any degree of conviction and blowhard MPs, who use it as an opportunity to grandstand in public. Damian Collins anybody?

The loss of public revenue from tax avoidance, on the other hand, is genuinely important and undermines our society at a point where the NHS and other public services are underfunded and struggling.

So I guess I’m saying that while I get where you’re coming from, there’s no genuine equivalence between the two. One genuinely matters in the big sense, the other is a relative irrelevance.

Just providing some context.

Cortisone use is what both David Millar and Michael Rassmussen claimed was essential to their doping programmes and what a certain lance Armstrong was popped for in ’99 before magicing up a backdated TUE.

Wiggins doc at Garmin didn’t feel the need to proscribe it.

Asked if “finding the gains might mean getting the TUE”, Sutton repeated the question, before adding: “Yes, because the rules allow you to do that.”

Back in 2011/12 this is what was done. But if you are claiming to be clean??? Nah, it was just bullshit and now they’ve admitted it.

Where is Wiggin’s medical records? “Missing”. Where’s the doctor “ill”… Why did they have at least three different stories about the ‘package’?

And yet Sky are ‘meticulous’, ‘no stone unturned’. Its almost like they have something to hide!

/ Just providing some context.

I’d be a little wary of using 2011 events to paint a picture of the current situation.

Except of course this is exactly the period that Froome made his jump from about to be let go domestique to GT GC 2nd places…

And yet Sky are ‘meticulous’, ‘no stone unturned’. Its almost like they have something to hide!

It is comical that. An organisation that mines huge amounts of data for marginal gains and could tell you what Wiggins had for breakfast that morning can’t tell you what medication got delivered.

Cortisone use is what both David Millar and Michael Rassmussen claimed was essential to their doping programmes and what a certain lance Armstrong was popped for in ’99 before magicing up a backdated TUE.

I’m not arguing with you, so please don’t react as it I am, but is there objective evidence that triamcinolone is a PED? Some of the listed side-effects like muscle wastage probably aren’t, but a lot of the stuff about it seems to be anecdotal from known dopers. Are there sports science studies that back up the anecdotes I mean.

Muscle wastage… if the kg goes down faster than the watts, which is the anecdotal evidence, then most definitely an advantage.

Scientific studies, plenty.. a quick google…

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/17805102/

It is comical that. An organisation that mines huge amounts of data for marginal gains and could tell you what Wiggins had for breakfast that morning can’t tell you what medication got delivered.

What’s more comical is that so many folk still believe them. No wonder they’ve had to remove the word “gullible” from the dictionary.

It is comical that. An organisation that mines huge amounts of data for marginal gains and could tell you what Wiggins had for breakfast that morning can’t tell you what medication got delivered.

All cycling teams do this. They’re operating usually two, occasionally three teams simultaneously at various events around the world.

I know a manager of a domestic UK team (not Sky!) who asked a mate to fly out to a race with a spare bike when they broke one as (for that destination) it was cheaper and quicker to fly a person with baggage than it was to have the bike shipped on its own. There could have been anything in the bike box, the guy taking it just knew that he had a free 5 day holiday!

So he lied at check-in?

Crazy legs, not saying the practice is exceptional in some way. What is exceptional is the lack of evidence and the comical and shambolic attempts at explaining it away (with more than a whiff of cover up) from an organisation claiming it operates at the pinnacle of professionalism for the sport.

That’s what i’d be complaining about if I was Wiggins instead of complaining about UKADA and demanding to know who the whistleblower was. Instead he defends the team and doctors.

Shame the admission had to come from Sutton after his exit rather than Wiggo or Dave B.

If they’d owned it and been more frank I think they’d be in a better place now.

Sutton’s admission and TUE is one thing, Jiffy bag is another.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2017/nov/15/jiffy-gate-ukad-investigation-sir-bradley-wiggins

Even Wiggins’s statement in response to Ukad closing his case was unsatisfactory. On the one hand, he criticised the medical team around him for not doing their jobs and keeping proper records. On the other, he praised Freeman. Like a lot of things about this case, it does not quite add up.

is there objective evidence that triamcinolone is a PED?

I don’t know, maybe the fact its a banned substance might have something to say about it… But I’m sure it doesn’t really do a thing… 🙄

I think there’s quite likely a fundamental difference between long-term dosing of a glucocorticoid in a subject, and brief exposure, possibly to higher levels than we’d “allow” for longer use (there are papers that suggest that short use may do the opposite of what long term use does, at least in some respects.

As a result, what many books will say are the (side) effects of steroids on muscle or fat could be misleading, as they’re based on patients (generally old, unfit, with chronic diseases or else with a chronic overproduction of their own steroid) and not intensively exercising athletes

I doubt any athlete would use steroids in the long term. Just, you know, when they needed them

That’s what i’d be complaining about if I was Wiggins instead of complaining about UKADA and demanding to know who the whistleblower was. Instead he defends the team and doctors.

To be fair he actually said this:

“I put ultimate trust in the team around me to do their jobs in their specific field of expertise to the same standard that I would expect of myself on the bike. Had the infrastructure for precise record keeping being in place this investigation would never have started.”