The ‘Fancy Bear’ hacking group’s leaking of documents gleaned from the World Anti-Doping Agency’s computer systems has placed Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome under the more immediate spotlight, but the information produced also raises wider questions, both for Team Sky’s medical staff and for cycling as a whole. In particular, it highlights the issue of corticosteroid use in cycling, and the pressing need for reform of the current Therapeutic Use Exemption system.
The leak shows that Froome received TUEs to use the corticosteroid prednisolone in May 2013 – out-of-competition, ahead of the Critérium du Dauphiné – and again in April 2014, this time in competition, during the Tour de Romandie. In a statement on Thursday, Froome said that he had “no issues” with the leak, given out that each of the TUEs were already in the public domain.
In 2014, Le Journal de Dimanche revealed the Tour de Romandie TUE, and questioned whether the UCI had unfairly expedited the process, while earlier this year, Froome told the Scotsman of his previous TUE application in 2013.
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Last year, Froome had already told the Sunday Times that he had refused to apply for a TUE during the 2015 Tour de France – despite Team Sky’s apparent encouragement to do so. “I didn't want it to be the Tour de France that was won because he took this medication in the last week,” Froome said then.
The Wiggins’ TUEs uncovered by the hackers were more newsworthy, given that they hadn’t been reported previously, and a statement by a WIGGINS spokesperson that there was “nothing new here” was disingenuous at best. It was by no means common knowledge that Wiggins, then at Team Highroad, had received TUEs in 2008 to treat asthma with Salbutamol, Fluticasone, Formoterol and Budesonide.
And it was certainly very notable to learn that Wiggins had, in the days before each of his last three Grand Tours – the 2011 and 2012 Tours, and the 2013 Giro d’Italia – received a TUE for a 40mg intramuscular injection of the corticosteroid Triamcinolone Acetonide, presumably applied for with the knowledge and blessing of his Sky team.
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