Chris Froome's scathing attack on 'abuse' of TUEs in wake of Bradley Wiggins interview
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Updated 27/09/2016 at 11:37 GMT
Tour de France champion Chris Froome has posted a statement on social media in which he blasts sports stars who abuse the 'Therapeutic Use Exemption' rules.
Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome
Image credit: Reuters
In what will be widely interpreted as an attack on his former Team Sky team-mate Bradley Wiggins, Froome's statement on Twitter said that he has always strived to "not only abide by the rules, but also go above and beyond that to set a good example both morally and ethically.
"It's clear that the TUE system is open to abuse and I believe that this is something that the UCI and WADA needs to urgently address...
"I have never had a 'win at all costs' approach in this regard.... I believe that this is something that athletes need to take responsibility for themselves."
The statement comes just two days after Wiggins went on the BBC's Andrew Marr show to explain why he had steroid injections on the eve of the 2012 Tour de France, which he won.
Wiggins told Marr - entirely correctly - that he had been scrupulous to abide by the rules set by WADA and the UCI as regards the use of banned medication, adding that he'd taken it only to get himself "on a level playing field" with his opponents in the race.
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Bradley Wiggins denies seeking unfair advantage through drugs
But many critics have questioned the timing and manner of Wiggins's steroid injections. Sunday Times chief sports writer David Walsh wrote an article a few days ago addressing what he called "three questionable corticosteroid injections in the days before his biggest races in 2011, 2012 and 2013".
People on the inside believe the granting of those TUEs was a travesty of the ethical standards the team aspired to. They understand, too, that there are consequences and herein lies the sporting tragedy.
[Sky team boss Dave] Brailsford created a magnificent team that mostly played by the rules but at a critical moment played fast and loose with ethics. They behaved in a way they would not have accepted from rivals.
Walsh later said in a radio interview that he believed Wiggins received a clear advantage from what he'd done - and pointed out that the medication he took was already questionable:
He got a drug that it's very hard to see the justification for him being given that amount of a corticosteroid by injection when it was four days before the start of the 2012 Tour de France. In medical terms, it has been a treatment for pollen-related allergies. But the medical world before 2011 when Bradley Wiggins started taking this, it had gone into disrepute.
Even the medical world were saying this drug is too extreme a therapy for pollen-related allergies and had gone away from it.
So for the doctor of Team Sky to apply for this, for the UCI to authorise it and for Bradley Wiggins to have it, in my view it was just plain wrong and in my view the likelihood is it gave Bradley Wiggins a performance-enhancing advantage.
Tom Dumoulin of Giant-Alpecin put it even more succinctly, saying simply, "It stinks."
In that context, it is perhaps unsurprising that respondents to Froome's Twitter post have drawn the link between his words and Wiggins's actions.
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