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news
Wiggins and Froome (pic Bettini Photo, courtesy Pinarello)Russian hackers publish Wiggins and Froome medical files
Russian hackers who accessed the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) database have published further medical files relating to athletes who competed at the Rio Olympic Games, including British cyclists Sir Bradley Wigggins and Chris Froome. The documents include details of normally banned drugs that they have been allowed to use under a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE).
The latest release of records follows the disclosure earlier this week of ones relating to American tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams and the gymnast, Simone Biles.
While there is no evidence of any of the 29 athletes whose records have been disclosed having doped, the group responsible for publishing the data, who go by the name Fancy Bears, insist that TUEs are “licenses for doping.”
According to The Guardian, Wiggins received TUEs for four separate substances on several occasions between 2008 and 2013. Those include the asthma drugs salbutamol, formeterol and budesonide, plus triamcinolone acetonide, used to treat the 36-year-old’s pollen allergy.
The TUEs cover the period from 2008 to 2013. At the start of that period, Wiggins raced for Team High Road, although his main focus was on the track where he won gold in the individual and team pursuits at the Beijing Olympics.
He joined Garmin-Slipstream in 2009, finishing fourth in the Tour de France (he was later elevated to third following Lance Armstrong’s ban), moving to Team Sky the following year, with whom he won the 2012 Tour de France.
Races where he was granted a TUE are said to include the 2011 Tour de France, where Wiggins crashed out on Stage 7, and the 2013 Giro d’Italia, which he abandoned halfway through due to a chest infection and knee injury.
Froome, meanwhile, was granted a TUE in April 2014 to use the drug prednisolone, used for various inflammatory and autoimmune conditions, at the Tour de Romandie, something that was reported on the same year by French newspaper Le Journal Du Dimanche.
The documents released by Fancy Bears however also reveal that Froome had been given permission to use the same substance at the previous year’s Critérium du Dauphiné, shortly before he won the Tour de France with Team Sky.
At Rio last month, Wiggins became Great Britain's most decorated Olympian ever in terms of total medals won as he secured his fifth career gold, riding in the team pursuit. Froome won bronze in the time trial, just as he had done at London 2012 where Wiggins took gold.
WADA believes that the cyber attack is designed to undermine the global anti-doping system and that it has “no doubt” that it also serves as retaliation for Russia’s track and field team and a number of other athletes being excluded from the Rio Olympics. There is a blanket ban on Russian athletes at the Paralympics.
The agency has appealed to the Russian authorities for help in stopping the publication of information, although the Kremlin strongly denies any involvement.
According to WADA, the data is being released in batches and is restricted to athletes who competed in the Rio Olympic Games, with its database accessed via an International Olympic Committee-created account.
WADA director general Olivier Niggli said the organisation “is very mindful that this criminal attack, which to date has recklessly exposed personal data of 29 athletes, will be very distressing for the athletes that have been targeted; and, cause apprehension for all athletes that were involved in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.”
He continued: “To those athletes that have been impacted, we regret that criminals have attempted to smear your reputations in this way; and, assure you that we are receiving intelligence and advice from the highest level law enforcement and IT security agencies that we are putting into action.
“Given this intelligence and advice, WADA has no doubt that these ongoing attacks are being carried out in retaliation against the agency, and the global anti-doping system, because of our independent Pound and McLaren investigations that exposed state-sponsored doping in Russia.
“We condemn this criminal activity and have asked the Russian Government to do everything in their power to make it stop.
“Continued cyber-attacks emanating from Russia seriously undermine the work that is being carried out to rebuild a compliant anti-doping program in Russia," he concluded.
The continued disclosures have reignited the debate over the use of TUEs by athletes and whether there should be more transparency around the process, including making details publicly available as a matter of course.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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39 comments
Oh those pesky Russians!
They use illegal methods to point out the others are more illegal than them! When it comes to drugs, they are far more advanced than the western world!
TUES are legal according to the World Anti Doping Agency! WADA have the records, results and blood passports of all the pro riders. If they see a pattern or unusual hermaticrit readings then they act apon it. There are dopers out there in the pro ranks but not Wiggins and froome.
Just wondering whether it's worth taking these TUE docs and loading them into a big data platform then trying to correlate with other datasets around the athletes performance.
Would be a nice project but there are at least a dozen different sports bodies that can issue TUE's around the world for cycling alone. Trying to get them all to co-operate and release their data would be one hell of a mission even for the hackers.
Also it would be skewed as we wouldn't have access to non-documented drug usage. Still, would be interesting to see!
Unc,
Chill your beans love or you'll be needing an inhaler.
You seem to be crossing the line from lovable grump to internet troll...
Shit-stirring a day after everyone else is done making their case, as usual for you.
This guy 'alansmurphy' has a history of making snide pot-shots at people and running off, without making any sort of point. Really sad. Wise up.
He called you out as a tedious internet troll. That was his point, and a good one.
Oh yeah, we got you unconstituted. He called you a troll and it was a good point! High Five guys!!
You guys are cringe. Go circle-jerk in the bike shed.
His posts, like yours are full of bitchy hit-and-run snipes. Seriously sad as.
Hack the Russian athlete records now
I'd imagine their official records will look very clean. It's what people don't record that's interesting!
Clearly Froome's TUE's in 2013 and 2014 are responsable for his jump in performance in 2011!!!!!
Only the most desperate tinfoil hatter can pretend there is anything sinister in this story.
The Russians must be very disappointed. They go to thr trouble of hacking some of the most suspected athletes' files and what do they find? That they've been doing everything legally. Damn.
The asthma meds are beta-2 agonists, which are known to lean muscle. The studies are generally on larger doses in animals - some will say there is therefore no evidence of this for smaller doses in humans, but long-term human trials are of course very diffcult. Conversely, there is no reason either to think the effect of a drug disappears rather than attenuates.
OMG you guys must be new here. 'Unconstituted' is NEVER wrong and often reacts very strongly to others who express alternative views. He frequently makes comment threads descend into bitter, vitriolic arguments with his rude attitude and often makes Road.cc a pretty miserable place to be, frankly.
Poor Sagan must be gutted his image is being used in this way.
2 single TUE's for Froome in 9 years is a complete non story. Wiggins, slightly surprised at the range of medicines in his TUE's but would still class it as a non event. Maybe as a result TUE's need to be published across all sports to make it more transparent.
There's not really that much of a range in Wiggo's TUEs. Except for Triamcinolone acetonide for his hay fever, they're all asthma inhalers. Salbutamol for whenever you're wheezy (usually in a blue inhaler), all the others are various preventative inhalers taken every morning (mine was brown). I suppose it is a little odd that he has a couple of "brown" types, but it might be an issue of needing to get inhalers around the world, or waiting to see which inhaler worked best for him. The three asthma TUEs were for 12 months each (one from June 08, and two from Dec 08), so would have to cover everything he might be prescribed in that time. From 2010 Salbutamol was removed from WADA's list, and Formoterol followed in 2012.
Agree though, complete non-story. Sometimes, asthma is just asthma.
Right, while that lot get busy slicing up quotes and copy and pasting info dumps to impress fellow apologists I have a question.
Who knows how many TUE's UKAD issued in recent years over all sports and cyclists specifically?
as i said i'm not a doping apologist, and have in fact been speaking out on this subject for a long time. I strongly against drugs in general (unless you have a genuine illness that requires some sort of drug therapy). I've even spoken out about some of these athletes previously.
However, the point i was making is that you're talking utter rubbish in terms of some of the things you said with regards to drugs and performance etc. I've pointed those issues out, and explained further. I'll be stopping that now with you, unless you have anything sensible to add too the discussion.
cheers
ric
I'd go with what Ric has to say as he knows more about performance athletes than most. See his posts on other forums.
Good, short article here on the prevalence of Asthma within Elite athletes in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/apr/29/elite-athletes-asthma-simo...
I've read a few of the background books on cycling and one thing that carries across is the fragility of elite cyclists. They are operating at the limits of endurance, almost starved to ensure maximising their power to weight ratio and with very limited and controlled opportunities for recovery (especially during stage races).
This is no apology, but really you almost have to imagine that under these conditions it takes very little to allow the onset of an infection or condition that then takes them out of contention for extended periods. As a result, the widespread use of TUEs is not entirely surprising.
If you don't abuse, you're gonna lose!
Oh dear God
I'm not comparing myself to Brad here but I too am a lifetime sufferer of hayfever and, in the last two years have acquired quite considerable symptoms as I have started to get into competitve cycling. I have a prescription for some of the drugs Brad has used here to help and they do, putting me back on the level I am outside of late spring/early summer where I suffer the most.
All in all, this is an obvious, state sponsored retaliation that has not revealed much in this instance. Tht said I see no real reason why all this information isn't open to the public anyway, at the very least retrospectively at the end of the season.
Maybe these should have been public in the first place? This would avoid the speculations and might also reduce the usage. And you wouldn't have to worry about hackers.
Pro cyclists seem to be affected by more illnesses than me.
They're affected by more illnesses than most of us, generally speaking. Their bodies are permanently on the very edge of breakdown given their training and racing workloads. Fragile creatures!
It sounds so much more menacing if they are "Russian" Hackers...
I can't imagine anyone being surprised by this, in fact I expected the pair of them to have used TUE's even more than they have so this does absolutely nothing to undermine the atheletes or the WADA in my eyes.
Surely the rest of the info will show that the majority of atheletes have had a TUE at some point or other, perhaps if a strong correlation can be shown between the use of these substances abd race victories then it could be cause for concern but otherwise it really won't prove anything.
That said, once the mainstream media puts it's spin on this things could turn out quite differently...
If it turns out Bradley has been using a hair growth serum to enlarge his sideburns then he is finished. He might as well move to Colorado and join Lance and Floyd in a joint venture to put on 24 hour mountain bike events with free pot and a Paul Weller tribute band playing in the rest area.
I wonder what Lizzie Armitstead's opinion is of all this.
Saw the partial leak earlier - it was as expected - stacks of performance enchanging drugs being used. Literally, stacks. Steroids for strength and anything else to open up the airways, increasing oxygen production. If you don't have 'asthma' or 'allergies' and a compliant doctor, then you don't get stages.
Bet if you draw up a graph of usage and race dates you'll see a rather predictable pattern. Froome rocking steroids at Dauphine for example, because of a vague 'inflammatory condition'.
Not bothered or surprised personally, though I did spot a steroid I hadn't heard of before from Wiggin's usage (budesonide). Thought I was a pretty clued up armchair doper
All adds to the drama and history of the sport, good stuff!
budesonide (Pulmicort) is a 'regular' inhaler used for prevention of asthma (as opposed to a reliever such as salbutamol which stops an attack that has just happened). It may be available in other forms as well (e.g. a tablet) and i'm not sure how it was used in these instances.
Increases in strength aren't needed for endurance cycling such as the pursuit or the TdF, pretty much everyone who rides a bike can exceed the forces needed to _win_ the TdF.
The asthma meds etc don't "increase oxygen production" and nor is a lack of O2 an issue in getting it into the lungs. It's the delivery and useage of the O2 around the body which is a limiting factor
Just correcting these thoughts rather than making any suggestions as to whether they've 'doped' or not.
Mad amount off drivel there, some of it outright bilge, like the 'strength isn't used in endurance' comedy - power, strength and endurance are all inter-related. And some of it convoluted nonsense, like the oxygen delivery. Clearly 'asthma' meds are being taken to maintain VO2 max in a different range of humidity that isn't easy to adapt to during world tours, something that hasn't been studied outside of the peloton.
Feel bad for the aplogists, this stuff must hurt them if they go into denial mode. I just plainly am not phased by it. But it is what it is - drug use. Loads of it. Tasty roids for breakfast.
WADA rules are merely goalposts, toyed around with over time. Just as everyone is free to choose their own goalposts.
But don't make a tit of yourself and start cherry picking excuses.
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