Nicole Cooke accuses cycling of sexism and failing in fight against drugs
By SSNHQ
Last Updated: 24/01/17 11:43pm
Nicole Cooke says cycling is a sport "run by men, for men" and their battle against doping is being waged by "the wrong people, in the wrong way, with the wrong tools".
Over 70 minutes of wide-ranging testimony, the former Olympic and world road race champion strongly criticised British Cycling, the International Cycling Union, UK Anti-Doping, UK Sport and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
Speaking to the MPs on Tuesday via an audio link from Paris, Cooke, who retired from racing in 2013, said British Cycling shows "discrimination and favouritism" and suggested resources were consistently unfairly distributed.
"Very little was ever done to support female road riders during my career," she said. "At times odd riders would be supported for a period, while they were 'in favour' but mostly, that support was only ever transient.
"I summarise that as a sport run by men, for men. I have attempted to achieve redress on a number of occasions but have encountered a governance structure at the National Federation - British Cycling - that is not responsible to anyone other than itself for its own actions."
She added that cycling "receives annually significant financial support from the public purse" and that, in her opinion, "such funds are not distributed equitably and in a decent manner for the benefit of the whole of the target population".
Cooke concluded her evidence by contrasting her use of the corticosteroid triamcinolone with Sir Bradley Wiggins' use of the same drug.
Both were given therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) - doctor's notes that let athletes take substances that would otherwise be banned - for injections of the triamcinolone, in Wiggins' case on the eve of the 2011 and 2012 Tours de France and the 2013 Giro d'Italia.
Cooke, however, explained she used it to treat a serious knee injury in 2003 and 2007, when the only alternative was surgery, and did not race until "long after the performance-enhancing effects had worn off".
She claimed Wiggins used the "same steroid before his main goals of the season".
Team Sky and Wiggins have been accused by sports physicians and riders of abusing the anti-doping system, but the team's principal and former British Cycling performance director Sir Dave Brailsford has defended the process around their TUE applications.
Brailsford discussed the situation with Sky News last September and insisted the team was "100 per cent clean and does things in the right way".
If there was any doubt about the point Cooke was making she spelled it out in the 6,000-word written testimony she provided to the committee.
In a section on her own experiences of trying to race clean in a dirty era, the 33-year-old Welsh cyclist noted the many riders at the biggest races with TUEs. She wrote that having such an exemption "was a very convenient way to mask a doping program".
Cooke explained she raised her concerns about the abuse of TUEs with the forerunner to UK Anti-Doping but was told "there were a number of very poorly elite athletes competing".
Eventually, she wrote, the TUE system was tightened up, with more independent oversight, but most asthma drugs were removed from the banned list and the use of corticosteroids was only controlled during races - there is no formal rule to prevent riders from abusing the drug between races when training.
"The significant majority of an elite athlete's time is spent out of competition. One gate was closed but a bigger one opened," wrote Cooke.
She said measures and schemes put in place to fight the abuse of performance enhancing drugs were "inadequate and ineffective", adding: "I summarise that as the wrong people fighting the wrong war, in the wrong way, with the wrong tools."
Cooke also criticised the UKAD, stating she had twice presented them with evidence of doping with little action taken.
She said: "In the first case they stated they would not do anything with my evidence. On the second they took no notes during the meeting and informed me I could not be given any information of any sort as to how they might process the evidence I gave them."
