Tom Dumoulin says the Bradley Wiggins/TUE episode 'stinks'

Dutchman Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) says that Bradley Wiggins’s pre-Tour de France corticosteroid injection "stinks" and that superfluous TUEs are "cheating."

Russian hacker group Fancy Bears published the therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) of several athletes in the last two weeks using data gained illegally from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) database

Fancy Bears' second data dump showed Wiggins applied for and received permission from the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) to inject triamcinolone, a corticosteroid, ahead of the 2011 and 2012 editions of the Tour de France, and ahead of the 2013 Giro d'Italia.

Dumoulin, silver medallist in the Rio 2016 Olympic time trial and compared to Wiggins as a time triallist-cum-classification cyclist, was disgusted by the revelations.

"It is very strange that every time Wiggins took the medication it was in the same period," Dumoulin told Dutch newspaper De Limburger.

>>> Bradley Wiggins: corticosteroid use ‘wasn’t about trying to gain an unfair advantage’

"And injecting? So then you have very bad asthma, different from the normal asthmatic. Or let alone athletes who only have exercise-induced asthma. Apparently Wiggins's injection worked for weeks. If so, then in my opinion, you should sit out of competition for weeks. This thing stinks."

Confessed dopers David Millar, Jorg Jaksche and Michael Rasmussen recently said that the effects of triamcinolone or 'Kenacort' are strong.

"As I said in my book, I took EPO and testosterone patches, and they obviously produce huge differences... Kenacort [triamcinolone], though, was the only one you took and three days later you looked different," Millar told The Telegraph last week.

"You would do all the training but my weight would stick. But if I took Kenacort, 1.5-2kgs would drop off in like a week. And not only would the weight drop off, I would feel stronger."

"No, that's cheating?" Dumoulin said when asked if he would consider applying for such a TUE.

>>> David Millar calls for Bradley Wiggins’s TUE medication to be banned

"I have never applied for a certificate. I once used a puff, but I did not need permission. This controversy of certificates comes up quite often. It is still ingrained in the sport. And I think these are certificates that are already approved in advance. The system works for shit."

"You'd have no hassle [if the TUEs were made public], everyone would know what you're doing, even if it runs counter to medical confidentiality. If it helps us get closer to a clean sport, I'm for it."

Dumoulin would be unable to race with such a certificate if he wanted to. His Giant-Alpecin team is one of seven of the 18 teams who are part of the voluntary Movement for a Credible Cycling (MPCC). They follow stricter rules than WADA and the UCI require. One rule states that a team must pull a rider from competition for eight days if he needs use a corticosteroid for asthma.

Sky and other top teams like Etixx-QuickStep never joined the MPCC.

Wiggins defended his corticosteroid use on Sunday in an interview on BBC One. "This was to cure a medical condition," he said. "This wasn't about trying to find a way to gain an unfair advantage, this was about putting myself back on a level playing field in order to compete at the highest level."

Wiggins is due to retire at the end of this season with only the Abu Dhabi Tour, and the London and Ghent Six-Days on his calendar.