The former Team Sky rider Jonathan Tiernan-Locke has questioned why his former team allowed Sir Bradley Wiggins to take a banned drug to treat his asthma.
Tiernan-Locke, who was sacked by Team Sky for a doping violation in 2014, told the BBC in an interview earlier this week that he believes the granting of a therapeutic use exemption (TUE) to take triamcinolone before Wiggins’s 2012 Tour de France win “looks suspicious”.
“I don’t want to insinuate anything, but the timing doesn’t look great,” he said. “You assume if you had a need for such a thing it would be consistent throughout his career, that you’d use it year in year out, so from that point of view it looks suspicious.
“But from the other perspective, we’ve got a guy who’s favourite for the general classification in these big races, so for a team like Sky who are so thorough, they don’t want to leave anything to chance so why risk these allergies derailing their best-laid plans, so I understand it.”
Tiernan-Locke also alleged that Great Britain’s cyclists were offered a controversial painkiller at the 2012 road world championships – even if they did not have a medical problem. “There was a time I rode the world championships and we were offered a painkiller called tramadol,” he said.
“I wasn’t in any pain so I didn’t need to take it, and that was offered freely around. It just didn’t sit well with me at the time. I thought: ‘I’m not in any pain, why would I want a painkiller?’”
On Friday, UK Anti-Doping said it is examining an “allegation of wrongdoing within cycling”. The announcement came as the Daily Mail reported Ukad is investigating Team Sky and Sir Bradley Wiggins over the contents of a medical package.
When asked if Team Sky has been tainted, Tiernan-Locke said: “That’s a difficult one. For me, not personally. What Bradley won in the run up to that 2012 Tour de France win I personally believe it’s a case of preventing anything that might have derailed their plans, but I do think they have become tainted.
“People I have spoken to, out of training, it has kind of tainted their image somewhat. I think their modus operandi was to put things out in the public domain and look transparent and not have anything to hide. It’s somewhat less than transparent.”
Now 31, Tiernan-Locke was banned for two years and sacked by Team Sky in July 2014 after violation of the biological passport held by the UCI, cycling’s governing body – the first time any British athlete has been sanctioned in this way.
