The Richard Freeman affair casts a cloud over British cycling

For those with neither the time nor inclination to plough through a PhD in the intricacies of the scandals surrounding British cycling, here’s a quick suggestion for Sir Dave ‘Marginal Gains’ Brailsford, head of Team Sky, now Ineos Grenadiers. His former team doctor, Richard Freeman, has been found guilty of ordering packages of banned testosterone for an unnamed rider a decade ago in 2011 but — in a neat piece of Harry and Meghan-style ‘We’re not saying who said what’ — has refused to reveal which athlete.

So since it seems that marginal gains might involve considerably more than just the type of plastic used on the cyclists’ helmets, Brailsford should perhaps drop a line to the organisers of the Tour de France pointing out that cycling doesn’t seem to have changed much since St Oprah Winfrey’s last jaw-dropper of an interview with disgraced rider Lance Armstrong. And that being the case, perhaps Armstrong’s seven Tour winner’s medals should be restored.

After all, Armstrong told Winfrey, it’s not certain that he gained any unfair advantage from doping. In other words, more or less everybody was at it. Which now doesn’t seem too far from the truth. Now Sir Bradley Wiggins, who had his own issues with ‘breathing difficulties’ which were helpfully sorted out by a ‘-therapeutic use exemption’, allowing him to use a powerful performance-enhancing steroid, has weighed in, saying the Freeman affair ‘stinks to high heaven’ and leaves a cloud hanging over British riders. You don’t say, Sir Brad.

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