There was always a more than even chance that the affair nicknamed Jiffy bag-gate would never arrive at a definitive ending. The investigating UK Anti-Doping agency has limited powers, the events in question hark back five years and more into the past, the allegations were vague – that triamcinolone had been in a certain bag delivered at a certain time to be administered to Bradley Wiggins, who has stated via Instagram that the bag “was never delivered to me” – and the key witness, Dr Richard Freeman, appeared unwilling to engage fully with the inquiry.
As a result, Wednesday’s statement from Ukad confirming that no charges would be brought against any of the parties involved because the contents of the bag could not be defined one way or the other prompted little more than a resigned shrug of the shoulders in many quarters. Wiggins and Team Sky have consistently stated that there was no wrongdoing on their part and both have stated that the verdict backs this up; their critics feel that a lack of definitive evidence is just that.
For all the lengthy wait, Ukad’s timing was apposite in one sense; on Sunday the BBC is to show a documentary – Britain’s Cycling Superheroes, the Price of Success? – relating events in the background to the Jiffy bag affair: the therapeutic use exemptions accorded to Wiggins in the run-in to the 2011 and 2012 Tours de France and the 2013 Giro d’Italia so he could use the corticosteroid triamcinolone to treat a pollen allergy and the allegations of sexism and inappropriate comments that ended Shane Sutton’s tenure as technical director at British Cycling. (Here I should declare an interest: I was interviewed at some length for the documentary, for which I received a fee).
The Jiffy bag story acts as a coda to the governing body’s annus horribilis, but although the Ukad inquiry ended up going nowhere, its true significance is less the package per se, more its place as the starting point to a chain of revelations and questions. The wild card was the interest of the MPs on parliament’s culture, media and sport committee, led by Damian Collins, and their decision to link the affair to their hearings into doping in sport, making parts of Ukad’s investigation very public.
As well as detailed questioning of Sir Dave Brailsford and Sutton – which served to highlight the inadequacies of the explanations proffered for the delivery – by interlocutors who could not be dismissed with a “no comment” or merely the assertion that “we do it right” – which served to highlight the inadequacies of the explanations proffered for the delivery – the hearings provided the critical piece of information, courtesy of the Ukad head Nicole Sapstead, that a quantity of triamcinolone had been acquired on behalf of Team Sky, between 2010-2013, that was far in excess of what would have been needed for Wiggins’s three TUEs: 55 doses, the team confirmed.
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The salient questions relate to the triamcinolone: what was it used for, for whom was it all intended and why was it ordered in? In a written answer to Collins’s committee Team Sky could account for 10 doses, suggesting that the rest may have been destined for Dr Freeman’s private practice. Writing to Collins’s committee, Dr Freeman stated that he had administered triamcinolone to only one rider at Team Sky and British Cycling.
The mystery remains. Also hanging is the question raised in a whistleblower’s letter that formed part of the inquiry, as to whether there had been a change in philosophy at Team Sky late in 2010, leading the team to begin using legal injections for “recovery”, until the practice was banned in May 2011.
Where now? For Ukad, Collins’s committee should recommend an increased budget and greater powers based on making doping and/or the administration of doping products a criminal offence.
For Team Sky, meanwhile, there is a reputation to be rebuilt – as Brailsford will remain at the team it has to be a priority. It would be a relatively simple step to join the Movement for Credible Cycling, the voluntary body that campaigns against the use of cortisone and tramadol in competition; it would be an answer to the team’s many critics and a major boost to the MPCC. The direction of travel is towards tighter limits on both products, so why not be ahead of the game?
Sky could go one step further and announce that they will make any future TUEs public subject to certain limits on privacy if (as is highly unlikely) the medicines were to relate to non-sporting areas such as mental or sexual issues. They could publish an annual audit of tramadol use, given that – according to their written answer to Collins – its use in the team is currently minimal and related only to serious injury.
These things could be written into riders’ contracts, would imply that something has been learned from the past 12 months and would enable the team and Brailsford to move forwards. It is just under a year since he told Collins and his committee that a new spirit of openness would become his team’s hallmark as a result of the lessons learned and the world of cycling is still waiting for a move in that direction.