The British cycling coach who delivered the mysterious package to Team Sky at the centre of a UK Anti-Doping investigation, has said he had did not “have a clue” what the parcel contained. He also claimed it was usual for British Cycling to ask its staff to courier packages.
Simon Cope, then a women’s coach for British Cycling, travelled from Manchester to Geneva on 12 June 2011 to hand a “jiffy bag” to the Team Sky doctor Richard Freeman on the final day of the Critérium du Dauphiné, a race which Bradley Wiggins subsequently won. British Cycling has since said that package was sent for medical purposes.
Ukad investigators have met British Cycling staff at Manchester Velodrome, which it shares with Team Sky. Wiggins, who welcomed the investigation on Saturday, and his representatives have received no notification from Ukad and believe the 36-year-old is not a subject of the investigation. Team Sky are “confident there has been no wrongdoing” and had asked British Cycling to contact Ukad. British Cycling said it is “cooperating fully”.
Speaking to cyclingnews.com, Cope said he was given the package by a member of British Cycling staff. “It was just an envelope, a Jiffy bag, a small Jiffy bag,” he said. “As far as I know I could have been Speedplay pedals in there.
“I don’t have a clue what was in there. It wasn’t something unusual, either. If people were going somewhere they’d just say: ‘Can you take this?’ There’s no way that British Cycling are going to put something dodgy or illegal for them to take through customs. It’s just not going to happen. It’s just madness. You have to go through two sets of customs. Why are you going to take the risk?”
He also confirmed the package was for Freeman, rather than Wiggins, saying: “It was for the doctor.” He added: “It was nothing to do with Brad. I gave it to Richard Freeman. This parcel was asked for, for Richard Freeman. It could have been nasal strips or bandaids, I really don’t know.”
Despite working for British Cycling at the time, Cope said he carried out work on behalf of Team Sky on several occasions and helped to run training camps for them in the hope of being made a sporting director for the team.
Team Sky’s Sir Dave Brailsford initially claimed that Cope had actually been travelling to meet the British cyclist Emma Pooley. However, she has since confirmed that she was in Spain at the time and could not have met the coach, pointing out that it was “silly and careless” of Brailsford not to have checked the facts.
Cope told cyclingnews.com that the story had been “misconstrued”, saying he had attended other races in 2011 such as the Liège-Bastogne-Liège where he says he met the British cyclist Nicole Cook. There was no women’s race at the Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2011.
“I was women’s coach in title, but I didn’t actually have a role in 2011 and I did a hell of a lot of work for Sky. No one is questioning me going to the end of Liège-Bastogne-Liège are they?”
Team Sky, launched with a zero-tolerance policy to doping in 2010, “strongly refute” any allegation of wrongdoing. Team Sky and British Cycling have been intertwined since the road team was established for their first season in 2010.
Freeman is among those who have been employed by both. He did not accompany the Great Britain team to Qatar for the week-long UCI Road World Championships, which conclude on 16 October.
Freeman was the Team Sky doctor in June 2011 and initiated Wiggins’s application for three therapeutic use exemptions for an otherwise banned drug.
Data stolen by hackers from files held by the World Anti-Doping Agency showed Wiggins received three TUEs for anti-inflammatory drug triamcinolone – a substance which has a history of abuse in cycling – on the eve of the 2011 and 2012 Tours de France and 2013 Giro d’Italia. He became the first British winner of the Tour in 2012.
Wiggins and Brailsford, the British Cycling performance director until April 2014, have strenuously denied any wrongdoing, insisting each time the TUEs were medically necessary to deal with a pollen allergy that aggravates Wiggins’s long-standing asthma condition.
The TUEs also had the approval of the UCI, cycling’s world governing body, and there is no suggestion that Wiggins, who left Team Sky in April 2015, or the team, have broken any rules.
