Cookson defends TUE system as being more rigorous since Wiggins' applications

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UCI president Brian Cookson has said the process by which therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) are approved is more rigorous now than when Bradley Wiggins was allowed injections of the powerful corticosteroid triamcinolone acetonide in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Cookson declined to discuss the specifics of the case in a press conference at the World Championships in Doha on Saturday.

Last week, Cookson told Cyclingnews that he did not envisage that the UCI would take any action against Wiggins as "no rules have been broken". News of Wiggins’ TUEs entered the public domain after Russian cyber-hacking group Fancy Bears leaked information gleaned from the World Anti-Doping Agency's database last month.

On Saturday, Cookson suggested that Wiggins' TUEs had been approved by one man, former scientific adviser Dr. Mario Zorzoli, rather than a three-person committee of the kind now in place.

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"We now have a system where all TUEs have to be approved by a panel of three doctors. In those years there was a TUE committee, but it had become customary practice for a non-controversial TUE to be authorised by just one person," Cookson said. "That was something we very quickly realised, when I discovered the situation was not as rigid as I desired. We have tightened that system up."

Cookson confirmed that the "one person" who approved supposedly "non-controversial" TUEs was Zorzoli and added: "Just to be clear, Dr. Zorzoli does not work for the UCI any longer." Zorzoli left the governing body in 2015.

Earlier in the press conference, Cookson claimed that the UCI's current TUE procedure goes above and beyond the level demanded by the WADA code. (WADA's international standard for TUE committees, incidentally, already outlined that they "should include at least three physicians.") "We now exceed the requirements of the World Anti-Doping Agency, and that's been the situation for the last couple of years," he said. 

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