Nicole Sapstead blasts British Cycling and Team Sky over failure to keep proper records

Appearing before the Culture, Media and Sport (CMS) select committee, Sapstead told MPs her agency has been investigating an allegation of wrongdoing since September when it received a tip-off about a package delivered to Freeman for Wiggins at the end of the Criterium du Dauphine race in June 2011.

She said UKAD has conducted 34 interviews in an investigation that has taken up more than 1,000 man hours, often at the detriment of other work.

Despite that, Sapstead told the panel UKAD still does not know if the package contained legal decongestant Fluimucil, as Freeman claims, or the banned corticosteroid triamcinolone, which was the original allegation.

Sapstead said: “We are not able to confirm or refute that it contained Fluimucil. We have asked for inventories and medical records and we have not been able to ascertain that because there are no records.”

When asked why Freeman, who was too ill to appear before the panel, cannot prove that he gave Fluimucil to Wiggins, she said: “He kept medical records on a laptop and he was meant, according to Team Sky policy, to upload those records to a Dropbox the other team doctors had access to.

“But he didn’t do that, for whatever reason, and in 2014 his laptop was stolen when he was on holiday in Greece.”

Freeman, who still works for the governing body, not only breached Team Sky’s rules, but Sapstead’s evidence indicates he may also have failed to follow the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s guidelines.

Fluimucil was unlicensed in the UK in 2011 - Freeman appears to have sourced it from Germany and Switzerland - which means he should have kept detailed, contemporaneous notes of how he was using it.

Sapstead’s evidence that those notes do not exist is bad enough. But the UKAD chief executive was also highly critical of how all medicines, unlicensed or otherwise, were ordered and stored by staff at British Cycling and Team Sky, with no apparent attempt made to separate the drugs used by Great Britain riders and those used by Team Sky.

To the MPs’ incredulity, she explained there is simply no record of Fluimucil being ordered by Freeman but there are invoices for Kenalog, a brand name for triamcinolone. This is the drug that Wiggins controversially received special permission - known as a therapeutic use exemption (TUE) - to use before his three most important races in 2011, 2012 and 2013, including his 2012 Tour de France victory.

Now retired, Britain’s most decorated Olympian has previously said he needed this drug to prevent a flare-up of pollen-related breathing problems but his representatives declined to respond to Sapstead’s comments. Wiggins has always strenuously denied any wrongdoing.

Most worryingly for his hopes of putting this recent controversy behind him, Sapstead said she could not “confirm or deny” if Wiggins was actually given triamcinolone on the final day of the Dauphine, which would have been an anti-doping rule violation because he did not have a TUE to use it in that race, because of Freeman’s missing records.

She did, however, say the British Cycling medical store held a significant amount of Kenalog that suggested it was being used by more than one rider but knowing that for sure would require access to every rider’s medical files.

That, she made clear, would take a long time as getting access to Freeman’s records for Wiggins took four months, a request to the General Medical Council (GMC) and the use of an independent doctor to go through Freeman’s files.

Once the UKAD investigation is complete, British Cycling can expect a damning appraisal of its medical practices and Freeman may have to explain his actions to the GMC. But Sapstead’s testimony has only intensified the pressure on Team Sky principal Sir Dave Brailsford.

“Team Sky did have a policy (on keeping records), it’s just that not everyone was adhering to it,” Sapstead said.

“It strikes me as odd, too, particularly for a road racing team set up to prove races could be won clean. I think it’s strange they haven’t kept records to prove that.”

In a written statement, Team Sky restated its commitment to clean sport and said it would continue to fully cooperate with UKAD.

The statement said: “We abide by the rules and we are proud of our stance against doping. Any medical treatment, whatever its status, would only ever be given to a Team Sky rider if it was considered to be medically appropriate and justified.

“We have worked hard to put the right governance structures in place and we believe that our approach to anti-doping is rigorous and comprehensive. We continuously look to strengthen our own processes and systems, which have evolved since our formation.”

Such was the ferocity of Sapstead’s critique of the medical practices at Britain’s most successful sporting governing body and its all-conquering professional off-shoot, the earlier testimony provided by the courier of that package, former British Cycling coach Simon Cope, was almost forgotten.

Now working for Wiggins’ eponymous road team, Cope was described by one MP as the most “over-qualified delivery boy in history” but referred to himself as a “gap filler” who did as he was told and did not ask questions.

But like so many others in this story, he did acknowledge his actions six years ago - actions he could barely recall, even when prompted with items from his expense claim - may have badly damaged his reputation.