Bradley Wiggins and Co are ethically wrong to use sick notes, claims Olympic hero’s former team-mate Nicolas Roche
Team Sky rider fears Therapeutic Use Exemptions will keep being abused until rules are changed over the 'major problem'
BRADLEY WIGGINS’ use of sick notes to take banned drugs has been called ”ethically wrong” by a former team-mate.
And Team Sky rider Nicolas Roche fears Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs) will keep being abused until the rules are changed.
Wiggo, 36, used the medical exemptions within the rules to take the drug triamcinolone before three key races — which included his historic 2012 Tour de France triumph — to help treat his allergies.
But Roche, son of Ireland’s 1987 Tour winner Stephen, broke ranks within the cycling world to warn: “There is a major problem with TUEs.
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“You can do whatever you want against Wiggins but, unfortunately, as far as ethically it’s wrong, he is within the rules.
“It’s wrong that these rules are like that. That’s where the main problem is. Once we get those rules right, there won’t be any abuse.”
Team Sky portray themselves as the ‘most ethical’ team in the peloton.
But they and Wiggins have faced a storm since hacked data files revealed he used the drug to treat allergies before the 2011 and 2012 Tours and the 2013 Giro d’Italia.
The TUEs were approved by the UCI, cycling’s world governing body, who confirmed no action will be taken against Wiggins as no rules have been broken.
UK Anti-Doping are also investigating Team Sky and Wiggins over a package that was allegedly delivered to them by then GB Cycling women’s team boss Simon Cope at a race in France in 2011.
Roche, 32, joined Sky in 2015, the same year Wiggo left to form his own team, but will quit at the end of this year to join BMC Racing.
And Roche, who helped Sky finish fourth in the team time trial at the World Championships in Doha on Sunday, added: “It’s a problem not just in cycling, but in all sport.
“There was something like 6,000 TUEs this year. I was sick three times and I never needed a TUE. So there is a real problem on the ease of getting TUEs and how athletes can abuse them.
“If you work on that, then you have a solution. But the problem is much more than Wiggins, it’s the whole system that needs to be revised.”
RUSSIAN cyclist Irina Molicheva, 27, has been given a two-year ban for an anti-doping rules violation.