Why the continuing mystery of Team Sky's Jiffy bag is cycling's worst result

Despite conducting dozens of interviews over 14 months, UKAD cannot build an anti-doping case against anybody at cycling's governing body or its hugely successful professional off-shoot. Unfortunately, UKAD cannot clear anyone of alleged cheating, either.

Here, Press Association Sport tries to unpick the knot of dead ends, false leads and unanswered questions that have left cycling fans none the wiser.

What exactly was UKAD investigating?

The official line was "allegations of wrongdoing" but the main issue was the contents of a mystery package - or Jiffy bag, as it became better known - delivered to Team Sky's doctor at the end of the 2011 Criterium du Dauphine in France, a key Tour de France warm-up race that Sir Bradley Wiggins had just won. There were also claims that Dr Richard Freeman, who also worked for British Cycling, had freely distributed the controversial painkiller Tramadol to British riders before a race and that Team Sky were using intravenous recovery methods.

Why was the package so interesting?

UKAD and the Daily Mail, which first reported the story in October 2016, were always careful to avoid explaining what the actual allegation was but the story generated so much interest it reached Westminster, where the full story came tumbling out over two select committee hearings in December 2016 and March 2017. The package, it was claimed, contained the corticosteroid triamcinolone and Dr Freeman administered it to Wiggins on the Team Sky bus. This drug is banned "in competition", which in this case applied until midnight that night.

What could this have meant for Wiggins?

If UKAD could prove it was triamcinolone in that package, Wiggins would be looking at a backdated two-year ban, and the loss of his results, from June 2011. This, in case you have forgotten, would consign his historic 2012 to cycling's over-spilling dustbin of discredited achievements, and be a permanent stain on his career. Some would argue it has already been tarnished by the revelation he had a medical exemption to use triamcinolone to treat allergies at the 2011 and 2012 Tours de France and 2013 Giro d'Italia. This exemption was not in effect at the time of the Dauphine but its existence has only added to the uneasy questions surrounding this case.

How have Wiggins, British Cycling and Team Sky explained this?

With great difficulty is the short answer. All have denied any wrongdoing but Team Sky boss Sir Dave Brailsford originally suggested two reasons why the package could not have been delivered to Dr Freeman before being forced to admit it was delivered but there is no record of what was in it. When he, Shane Sutton (the man who organised the delivery), and Simon Cope (the British women's team coach who hand-delivered it from British Cycling's medical store in Manchester to the top of a French mountain) were summoned before a select committee, Brailsford said Dr Freeman had told him it was the legal decongestant Fluimucil.

So we do know what was in the package, then?

Sadly, Brailsford and British Cycling were quickly forced to admit that Dr Freeman could not prove this as he had not followed team procedures and shared his medical files with colleagues and had then lost his laptop on holiday a few years later. Even worse, the office he operated from at the National Cycling Centre could not come up with any paperwork to prove Fluimucil had been delivered to and dispatched from Manchester. UKAD's investigators, however, did find evidence that Dr Freeman had ordered lots of triamcinolone.

OK, where does all this leave us?

Well, as UKAD has explained, it cannot say what was in that package and it probably never will be able to do so. It is understood that Wiggins has told them it was Fluimucil and Dr Freeman has been too unwell to question in person but has written to UKAD to say the same. The former has retired from cycling, after winning another gold medal in Rio, and the latter has just resigned from British Cycling. That removed the last physical link to this saga at the national governing, which has completely overhauled its medical procedures. Team Sky have said they have done the same and spent the last year hunkered down but winning races. Cycling fans, on the other hand, are in pretty much the same place they were 14 months ago: confused.