Wiggins and Team Sky

The debate over the 2011 mystery package drags on-boringly so to many.

Might a simple explanation be that they didn't want to risk buying a "legal" French over-the-counter remedy to later find that it was tainted with something that, however infinitesimal, became a big "dope" story?

I know that if I were running a multi-million operation I wouldn't trust any medicine bought anywhere without doing my own testing. Same comments apply to food of course. And don't forget skullduggery!

Buy any chocolate bar and you'll see the standard warnings about possible contamination with nuts etc...

Most manufacturers' packing machinery runs all sorts of products, it's rarely bespoke. And even if it is washed down with scalding water, there is still the chance of residues lingering-anywhere; hence the standard disclaimers.

Just a thought.

Bit of a late response, as I only spotted this now when coming on to see the comments on the Tour... but anyway - my thoughts exactly. I was actually surprised when this kicked off thinking that surely no team would buy any medication (legal or otherwise) from an unknown supplier! If I had to buy for a sports team I would want to know the full supply chain for every product bought to ensure the risk of cross contamination is minimised.

My point exactly. The lack of responses suggests that most people prefer to imagine something sinister!

So yet again, in a sport that never seems to learn how to be 'good', the old adage of 'too good to be true' raises its head again.

Team Sky 'allegedly' took over - almost immediately - from where US Postal team left off.  And they did it on the marketing spiel of: 'Oh they were bad and corrupt but we is pure and saintly.'

And just as Team Sky - and even other linked and renowned British sporting people and organisations - are being criticised heavily by a UK Parliamentary Committee, I'd say the next on-the-up cycling outfit is already planning to take things to a new level of duplicity and yet market themselves as the newest all-above-board-anti-drug-super-fast-and-efficient cycling team.

It never stops.  When a cycling admin guy tells you the times of his best cyclists are all clear and beyond reproach in terms of any assistance from a drugs cabinet, that's when the next alarm bell will go off in my head.

I love watching Tour de France - for the scenery.  A road trip from the couch as it were.  As a sport, it's like Las Vegas in a early days - drugs, money, secret packages and lots of nods and lots of winks.

Always knew Wiggins was dirty. Never had the ability to translate to the road in the way he did. Team Sky & Brailsford’s reputation in tatters now. No way back from this, and it taints everything they’ve achieved, including all Froome’s titles in my opinion, given this shatters any of their integrity, in respect of his current misdemeanours. I’d expect it runs deeper, right through to the Velodrome achievements, whereby we were beaten soundly at the world championships, and then a year later sweeping the Olympics, with Brailsford being the brains behind the success.

Just John-your comments rather extreme?

I'm struggling to see how a medication is legal, but it isn't! There's always been a gray area over these "TUE"s.

Let's stand back and wait eh? I must say I'm a little wary of a Tory MP lecturing a Knight of the Realm on ethics!

Always thought Wiggins was dirty myself and I don’t even follow the sport. Just an inexplicable feeling you sometimes get

There is an avalanche of 'wait' issues though.  When you have a herd of inaccuracies, bad medical record keeping, sloppy record protection (laptops getting 'stolen' just when really needed for investigation); when journalists are encouraged to hush up stories, when bags have contents that nobody can clarify, when riding times and consistency appear 'too good to be true'.... we're back in Armstrong territory for sure.

And of course, what happened then?  We had die-hard fans of the sport claim that cyclists were being victimised and that everyone should 'wait' before throwing stones.

The stones have been thrown at some very very curious activity - long term - from a cycling outfit that expressed a desire to be SEEN to be clean and wanted to be SEEN as champions of a sport that had returned to a past where training excellence outshone dubious behaviour with drugs. The evidence is seeing something else.

This might all be part of a spider-like plot (instigated by the Americans, Russians, the French?) to get revenge for...Armstrong..Maria Sharipova..various French losers/moaners..).

OK-slightly tongue in cheek, but who can believe/trust anything that comes out of the House of Commons? Not exactly a paradigm of virtue. And the BBC, of course, just loves anything like this-we can rely 100% of their impartiality and commitment to investigative journalism.

Oh well, the future looks like being settling back to the British tradition of noble, "sporting" losers.

Where will the next Super Team come from?

Regarding Froome, I would just like to say that as a salbutamol user myself, I don’t see any performance enhancing benefit in that medicine at all. No steroid in it at all

Let's hope he gets "exonerated". The authorities don't seem to be rushing to consider the case and he seems incredibly relaxed over the whole matter.

Well the BBC seems to be keen to make a lot out of all this - hardly surprising given Dan Roan's almost obsessive "reporting" on allegations surrounding Team Sky for the last couple of years ; but if you boil it all down it still comes back to just that : more allegations. Some from an "anonymous" source (!) Wow.

You can have a debate about TUEs - probably we should - but they are and were legal so nothing attaching to their use in the case of Wiggins (who had a medical issue which so far as I know has never been disputed) constitutes cheating. Saw the Wiggins interview in which he freely admits he probably couldn't have won the tour without the jabs : but if using any form of medication to compensate for health problems were to be outlawed for athletes there would be a lot of swimmers who suffer from asthma leaving the sport...

The only solid evidence of wrongdoing I see around Sky is that this wretched package (about which there seems to exist no proof as to its contents was couriered into Europe without proper record being kept. Conspiracy or cockup ? The mudslingers say the secrecy around this "prove" something untoward was going on ; but it does no such thing. As Azabache points out above there is good reason why a legal medication might be sent abroad to treat a team member : and in fact if there were any skullduggery afoot I'd have thought it more likely the whole trail would be meticulously recorded (with false "product" information , of course) rather than be left out of the records altogether. In any case if the suggestion is this was an illegal drug administered to the cyclist why was no adverse drug test recorded ? They do test race winners .

Legalities and ethics ...and indeed it is a little ironic to hear a politician talking about the latter ! Whatever , some mud will stick no matter what ...so it appears the Fancy Bears have got what they wanted in this case. I will continue to wait and see if anything else ever surfaces before I join the baying mob...

Judging from the level and angle of the BBC reporting over the past few years, I get the impression that the BBC have a commercial interest in constantly hammering Team "Sky", as well as a social agenda interest against it - which they see as too white patriarchal - with their criticism that the management and coaches are bullies, sexists, bigots ... and cheats.

The important thing is that Team Sky did everything according to the rules of the day and got permission from the UCI every step of the way.

Wiggins came across well in the interview with the BBC have to say that I hope he gets away with it even if he did use it in practice of which there isn’t nor will ever be any evidence, he hasn’t broken any rules

The BBC should just stick to show jumping and other sports where they can call on their roster of plummy-voiced snobs and creepers. They're largely out of horse racing now-a good thing in my view-which has had a breath of fresh air recently. Though they have done one or two interesting coverages to be fair.

I think Alfie summarises this whole situation really well. I think Bradley did a fair interview bearing in mind that he's not a media lounge lizzard.

It’s obviously the dog’s bolloc£s triamcinalone even as a weight cutter it’s second to none never mind all the other gains, so why is it still legal and why wasn’t it made illegal years ago?

Today the BBC hits a new low in their extended article on their site.

And we now have the new head of the UCI jumping in trying to get Froome out of the Tour...any coincidence that he's....French!

Hi Azabache, the bbc ran a special on Chris Froome on their Children's channel (CBBC) a few months ago explaining that he had failed a drugs test and had yet to answer for it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/42336920

Newsround?

Always was a Frenchist Propaganda Platform that show!