Drug raid at Velodrome: Cycling in crisis as investigators swoop on dream factory – Daily Mail

Seven weeks after British Cycling was being celebrated for its phenomenal success at the Olympics, the sport was in crisis on Friday.

Its headquarters at the Manchester velodrome, the dream factory once described as ‘the beating heart of Britain’s ascension to the top of world cycling’, was targeted by investigators from UK Anti-Doping.

Rio had gone a long way to healing the scars of what had already been a difficult year. A positive drugs test for Simon Yates. The controversy of Shane Sutton’s departure as technical director. The storm that erupted, just before the Games, after revelations in this newspaper of Lizzie Armitstead’s three missed drugs tests.   

Sir Bradley Wiggins, Jason Kenny, Laura Trott and their Lycra-covered colleagues provided the perfect tonic with their brilliance on the boards. Six golds from the 10 track events. A medal for every rider who rode in anger on the track for Team GB.

After a most difficult few months the bosses at British Cycling must have been feeling pretty pleased with themselves. Even the inquiry into Sutton’s suspension and subsequent resignation appeared to be drawing to a close. There has even been some optimism in certain quarters that the Australian credited by many of the riders for masterminding British dominance at the 2016 Games would soon be back in charge.

But those same British Cycling bosses were faced with some serious questions on Friday and a team of investigators with a desire to get to the truth about a mystery medical package ordered by Team Sky in 2011 and a further allegation over the use of powerful pain-killers.

Both British Cycling and Team Sky deny any wrongdoing but sources inside the velodrome said staff were ‘shocked’ by the sudden arrival of the UK Anti-Doping investigators. Presumably the investigators would have requested access to files and the operation inside the medical room that is run by Dr Richard Freeman.

They might have even asked for records of the prescriptions normally taken to the pharmacy at the nearby Asda superstore. And they would have no doubt toured the offices underneath the track or above the cafeteria at the entrance to a building that, since its opening in 1994, has provided the setting for one of the most prolific production lines in the history of sport. Sky have their dedicated area, as do British Cycling.

When Sportsmail broke the story of UKAD investigating Wiggins and Team Sky late on Thursday night, it was a single allegation of ‘wrongdoing’.

By Friday UKAD had extended that to ‘allegations’ because of a separate claim made by the disgraced former Sky rider, Jonathan Tiernan-Locke, to the BBC that the potent painkiller tramadol was being ‘offered freely around’ the British team at the 2012 World Championships.

That put the two central organisations who share the National Cycling Centre velodrome in the firing line and highlighted the uncomfortable relationship that continues to exist between the publicly funded British Cycling organisation and the privately run Team Sky. And not just because, as Sportsmail revealed, the official asked to travel out to France with the medication for Team Sky on June 12 2011, in time for the end of the Dauphine Libere race won by Wiggins, was actually working for British Cycling at the time. 

Such a crossover was commonplace when Sir Dave Brailsford and Sutton were simultaneously running both arms of British Cycling. Indeed, Freeman has served both masters and was in Rio this summer as doctor to the Olympic riders.

Freeman has been a friend and confidant as well as a doctor to Wiggins. As David Walsh revealed in The Sunday Times last week, a senior rider was told by Wiggins that he could not catch a lift on the 2012 Tour de France winner’s private jet, only to then discover that Freeman had been allowed on board.

But Freeman also remains very close to Brailsford, which raises legitimate questions for the Team Sky principal to answer.

When I met Brailsford early last week, he already knew of my interest in Simon Cope, the former British Cycling coach now in charge of Sir Bradley’s Team Wiggins, and his role in the transportation of a package to France.

By Thursday night British Cycling had confirmed that Cope, at the request of senior Team Sky officials also working for BC, had travelled to La Toussuire and back in a single day with medication for a Team Sky rider.

So why, if it was that simple and Sky — as they said on Friday — are ‘confident there has been no wrongdoing’, did Brailsford present a version of events of what happened on June 12, 2011 that just wasn’t true?

Of course, his recollection may be hazy given the length of time that has passed. But it is difficult to understand why he suggested that Cope had travelled to meet Emma Pooley when the Olympic silver medallist was racing 700 miles away in Spain. ‘I don’t know why David Brailsford would imply I was there,’ Pooley said in an email to Sportsmail.

And why would Brailsford go to the lengths he did, requesting written statements from staff, to suggest Wiggins and Freeman could not have possibly met in private in the treatment room of the team bus that day because the bus had left before Wiggins had completed his podium, media and drug test commitments? There is a video on YouTube that shows Wiggins did make it back to the bus before it left.

The issue of why Team Sky went to such lengths to get a medication that may have been available in France also needs answering. It is worth noting that in 2011 cycling introduced its ‘no needles’ policy.

On Friday, both organisations said they could no longer comment now that an investigation, which is expected to take months, is under way. Yet Sky said in a statement: ‘Team Sky was contacted by the Daily Mail regarding an allegation of wrongdoing. We take any issues such as this very seriously and immediately conducted an internal review to establish the facts. We are confident there has been no wrongdoing.

‘We informed British Cycling of the allegation and asked them to contact UKAD, who we will continue to liaise with.

‘Team Sky is committed to clean competition. Our position on anti-doping is well known and we 100 per cent stand by that.’

The internal review to which they refer was led by Brailsford and resulted in the explanation about Pooley, which turned out to be wrong, and a suggestion that a £750,000 bus disappeared. It should be noted that UKAD’s investigation started long before anyone at Team Sky or British Cycling contacted the anti-doping agency.

The cosy relationship between the two cycling organisations in Manchester is under intense scrutiny and rightly so. Earlier this week a Team Sky communications officer told me that he had read the emails I had sent to British Cycling.

At Sky, who bankroll the £35million-a-year team of champions, there are said to have been high-level discussions about whether to maintain their sponsorship of the professional cycling team. Brailsford certainly worried that one more negative story would spell ‘the end’. Even inside Team Sky, key individuals are becoming increasingly twitchy now that their squeaky clean image has been so badly tarnished.

But the impact goes beyond Team Sky, their remarkable Tour de France success and the knighthoods for Wiggins and Brailsford. It has spread across British Cycling and all the way to Rio.

The focus is now on Manchester, where riders like Trott and Kenny are training for Tokyo 2020. On Friday hard-nosed investigators were asking probing questions about the methods being employed by Britain’s stand-out Olympic sport.