The latest report into the allegations that Team Sky and Bradley Wiggins used various dopants to win bicycle races rather fails to make the point being taken from it. The point being taken is that they’re all cheating bastards – presumably because the team has the word “Sky” in it and who knows with the Murdochs, right? The actual finding being that all and every rule, to the jot and tittle, was obeyed and medical drugs were used, within those rules, as medical drugs.
You know, bloke says he took aspirin, here’s the doctor’s note saying he can take aspirin, here’s the rule saying bloke can take aspirin if he’s a doctor’s note and……well, and what then?
An explosive report has suggested Team Sky and Bradley Wiggins used performance-enhancing drugs under the guise of treating a legitimate medical condition in order to win the 2012 Tour de France.
The long-awaited report by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee is a potential death knell for Team Sky. It calls into question exactly how they became one of the most successful outfits in British sporting history and draws a number of damaging conclusions.
Well, yes, that is the allegation. So, what’s the finding?
It was already known, courtesy of the Russian hackers Fancy Bears, that Wiggins was given injections of triamcinolone before he competed in three of cycling’s grand tours. But the suggestion that the abuse of that drug was possibly widespread in the team is grave. Most damagingly they say the team, led by Dave Brailsford, obtained therapeutic use exemption forms – effectively a doctor’s note – to allow triamcinolone to be used.
Ah, yes. So, the drug may not be used without permission. Permission was granted – the drug could be used. This is damning evidence? That they obeyed the rules?
There is of course the point that this is a select committee of the House of Commons looking at this. You know, one that, at least as far as we know, has neither jurisdiction over this issue nor even any particular knowledge. But then when we look at other reports that come from similar sources how much weight are we going to place upon them? All should recall Frank Field and friends moaning on about the BHS pensions deficit without once managing to mention the effects of QE for example.
So, the story as it actually is. Bloke needs permission to take drug. Bloke gets permission to take drug. MPs outraged.
And?
The question is whether bloke taking the drug faked the need to take it. I notice a rather large number of swimmers claim to be asthmatic. I am sure most people could find a co-operative doctor. Come to think of it, this is just what Maria Sharapova did. Although she had to go all the way back to Russia to find a co-operative doctor. Apparently finding one nearer her home in Florida was too easy. All in all this has that MeToo feeling to it. Winning cyclists take drugs? You don’t say. Next you will be telling me that there… Read more »
Asthma is one of these ‘spectrum’ diseases – everyone is a ‘bit’ asthmatic and if you can find a co-operative quack to sign you off as such, you can take performance enhancing medicine with impunity. Sky were successful because of the system of ‘marginal improvement’ instituted by Brailsford. They scoured the rules looking for loopholes they could exploit, and this was one of them.
Asthma has been shown, in some studies, to be more common amongst endurance and acquatic sportsmen and women than it is in the general populace.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0954611115001560
More to the point, why are we paying MPs to conduct enquiries into sporting matters in which vanishingly few people are interested? If they don’t have anything more important to do, then maybe they should just go home and talk to their constituents
Why are our employees (MPs) wasting their time investigating something over which they have no jurisdiction. If they want to do it on their own time then so be it, but the taxpayer shouldn’t have to pay for it surely?
Agreed. Just a bunch of grand-standing clowns.
And the line being spun this morning on the beeb is that no legal line was crossed but an ‘ethical’ one was. MPs complaining about ethics. Actual LOL.
There is a real scandal at the core of this and it’s that there is a government department called, and interfering with, Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Get rid. Lot’s of problems solved, hundreds of millions saved.
Likewise the Volkswagen Emissions Scandal. The company did not flout or evade emissions testing. Its vehicles accurately measured their own emissions, software having analyzed cues that the car was being tested by regulators, and temporarily modified the engine’s operation in the lab as would make it horribly balky on the road. The company complied with the law. The scandal was simply that the company did not share regulators’ values, as its customers don’t either.
I wonder if Labour controlled County Durham will take down the statue of drug taking cyclist Tommy Simpson that they recent erected.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-41283757
In my view, no they shouldn’t as it appears it was paid for by private subscription
And the TdF is a private sporting event, i think, so parliament should butt out.
‘An explosive report has suggested Team Sky’
Explosive and suggested really don’t go together.
Meanwhile, cyclist Gamecock remembers the doping stink with Lance Armstrong, and his saying, “I could never do what they did, no matter how many drugs I took.”
I am in awe of Lance and Wiggins. Doping is a minor footnote.
On the news they kept reporting that the Wiggins team had refuted the claims. If they’d refuted the claims (that is, provided evidence to prove that they are false), then job done, story over, nothing to see here.