Richard Freeman 'wants to share everything he knows' about British Cycling and Team Sky with WADA
Reports suggest the former British Cycling doctor has had some contact with the World Anti-Doping Agency's intelligence and investigations department
Former British Cycling and Team Sky doctor Richard Freeman apparently wants to share everything he knows about what happened at both organisations when he worked there with the World Anti-Doping Agency.
The doctor who was struck off the medical register after being found guilty of ordering banned testosterone "knowing or believing" it would be used to dope a rider (which he denies) is said to have had some contact with the WADA's intelligence and investigations department, according to the Mail on Sunday.
WADA has spent two months investigating how British Cycling was effectively allowed by UK Anti-Doping to conduct their own investigation into a 2010 sample from a prominent rider that tested positive for trace amounts of the steroid nandralone.
Freeman and the then Head of Medicine for British Cycling, Steve Peters, have been contacted by British Cycling in the past month over their fresh probe into how the organisation was allowed to investigate itself, the Sunday paper says, with Peters not answering the Mail on Sunday as to whether he was assisting with British Cycling's investigation. Meanwhile, Freeman is said to not feel able to cooperate due to British Cycling refusing to return a laptop to him that contains most of his medical records.
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The two doctors are also at odds over Sarah Storey's controversial therapeutic use exemption for salbutamol, issued retrospectively after the athlete had won four gold at the London 2012 Paralympic Games.
Freeman claims Peters told him to fill in forms related to Storey's TUE, which Peters denies.
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"I didn’t oversee the application. I don’t know who actually applied for it. I don’t know which doctors she [Storey] saw. I don’t know who is on the panel. I also wasn’t present when this happened," Peters said. His spokesman added that "no doctor instructs another doctor to do anything. He may have been consulted at the time to explain the TUE process."
British Cycling has been contacted for comment.
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Jonny was Cycling Weekly's Weekend Editor until 2022.
I like writing offbeat features and eating too much bread when working out on the road at bike races.
Before joining Cycling Weekly I worked at The Tab and I've also written for Vice, Time Out, and worked freelance for The Telegraph (I know, but I needed the money at the time so let me live).
I also worked for ITV Cycling between 2011-2018 on their Tour de France and Vuelta a España coverage. Sometimes I'd be helping the producers make the programme and other times I'd be getting the lunches. Just in case you were wondering - Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen had the same ham sandwich every day, it was great.