Nick Westby: Josh Edmondson's revelations place further pressure on Team Sky and British Cycling

THE dark clouds hovering over cycling appear closer to home following the revelations by Leeds rider Josh Edmondson that he broke rules over the use of needles and was addicted to painkillers.
Josh Edmondson, pictured riding for NFTO Pro Cycling last year. (Picture: Bruce Rollinson)Josh Edmondson, pictured riding for NFTO Pro Cycling last year. (Picture: Bruce Rollinson)
Josh Edmondson, pictured riding for NFTO Pro Cycling last year. (Picture: Bruce Rollinson)

The Yorkshireman laid his conscience bare on BBC last night in the starkest admission yet of needle abuse from a rider within British cycling.

He told the BBC that he confessed to the team’s senior management that he had been independently injecting himself with vitamins several times a week for a month in an attempt to make Sky’s team for the 2014 Vuelta a Espana.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

This contravenes the International Cycling Union’s (UCI) “no needles” policy as injections are only permitted if there is a clear medical need, there is no alternative, they are administered by a medical professional, the UCI is informed, and records are kept.

Edmondson’s confession threatens to devastate Team Sky, the British squad who have won four of the last five Tours de France. Team Sky burst onto the road cycling scene in 2010 vowing to win the sport’s blue riband event clean. They had a strict no needles policy, but their clean record began to come unstuck with the recent revelations that Sir Bradley Wiggins was granted three therapeutic use exemptions to take the anti-inflammatory drug triamcinolone before the 2011 and 2012 Tours de France – which he won – and the 2013 Giro d’Italia. Wiggins and Sky broke no rules, but it has opened up parliamentary hearings into record-keeping and practices at British Cycling and Team Sky.

The vitamins Edmondson bought do not amount to doping, but the sport’s governing body, the UCI, brought in rules in 2011 banning cyclists from using needles. Edmondson also claims he became hooked on Tramadol during his Team Sky stint – an addiction that led him to experience severe depression.

He said: “In 2014 I was under a lot of pressure, not just from the team but from myself. You want to renew your contract for one thing, and for me the bigger thing was not letting anyone down – this team had given me a chance by signing me and a bigger chance by letting me go to a Grand Tour [the Vuelta].

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“I think it was just before the Tour of Austria, I went to Italy to buy the vitamins that I was going to later inject. I brought them all back to Nice. I bought butterfly clips, the syringes, the carnitine [a supplement], folic acid, ‘TAD’ [a supplement], damiana compositum, and [vitamin] B12, and I’d just inject that two or three times a week maybe. Especially when I wanted to lose weight, I’d inject the carnitine more often because it was very effective.

Josh Edmondson, second right, riding for Team Sky in 2014 (Picture: Bruce Rollinson)Josh Edmondson, second right, riding for Team Sky in 2014 (Picture: Bruce Rollinson)
Josh Edmondson, second right, riding for Team Sky in 2014 (Picture: Bruce Rollinson)

“It dawned on me while I was doing it how extreme it was, putting the needle in and making sure there are no bubbles because if there is air in it, it can give you a heart attack and people can die from that.

“It is a very daunting thing to be doing, especially as I was sat in a room in a foreign country alone at night. It’s just a very surreal thing you do. It’s not something you take lightly. You’re doing it out of necessity really.”

Edmondson signed for Sky in 2013, aged 20. He struggled to establish himself in a team full of stars and did not have his contract renewed after 2014.

While riding for the lower-level NFTO Procycling last year, he told The Yorkshire Post at his home Tour de Yorkshire that he was much happier in the family environment of the smaller team.

Related topics: