Sky under a dark cloud

When Britain’s Team Sky made its debut in 2010, two things dominated its agenda. It planned to develop a British Tour de France winner within five years, and to do so with a zero-tolerance approach to doping.

Under Dave Brailsford, its chief executive, Sky's roster excluded cyclists and staff members who had any past involvement in doping. He swiftly purged anyone on his payroll who became the subject of doping allegations.

The team reached its first objective ahead of expectations when Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France in 2012. With Chris Froome, a Kenyan-born Briton, as its leader, Team Sky went on to win three of the past four editions of cycling's largest event. Sky transformed Britain from being almost a nonentity in professional road cycling into a world dominator.

In a sport repeatedly tainted by artificial performance enhancement, that record inevitably led to raised eyebrows and unproven suspicions.

But as cycling's world championships wound up in Doha, Qatar, a dark cloud has descended over both Wiggins' career and Sky's sometimes self-righteous claims of doping purity. No one is suggesting that Wiggins or the team broke any anti-doping rules. But the release of Wiggins' World Anti-Doping Agency files by Russian hackers has prompted several prominent members of the professional cycling community to suggest that Sky is, at the least, pushing to the limits of where the rules kick in. It also has become clear that Sky uses WADA's exemption system for therapeutic drug use in a way many other cycling teams long ago rejected because of ethical concerns.

"With Sky, it's either intentional malevolence, or the other possibility is that they weren't fully aware of what that action meant because they effectively eliminated anyone with any doping experience in their employment base," said Jonathan Vaughters, a former rider who confessed to doping and who is the chief executive of the US-based Cannondale-Drapac cycling team.

The critics even include some members of Team Sky. "You can do whatever you want against Wiggins, but unfortunately, as far as ethically, it's wrong he is within the rules," Nicolas Roche, an Irish cyclist who is switching teams for next season, told Cyclingnews at the world championships. "It is wrong that these rules are like that. That's where the main problem is."

The drug at the centre of the controversy, triamcinolone acetonide, when used without permission is an old-fashioned sort of performance enhancer. Unlike many modern forms of doping, including the blood booster erythropoietin, or EPO, and human growth hormone, it is easily detected in tests.

Triamcinolone belongs to a group of hormones known as corticosteroids. Its powerful anti-inflammatory effects are useful for cheating in a sport like cycling in which riders can spend hours racing every day for three weeks. It also reduces body weight, another attraction in a sport in which top riders obsess over leanness.

While Froome has chalked up more Tour wins, Wiggins is by far the biggest cycling star in cycling-mad Britain. In a clean-cut sport in which most riders adopt an almost monastic approach to life, Wiggins has reveled in publicly savoring cocktails, sporting beards with varying degrees of stylish unkemptness and offering opinions that could make public-relations handlers cringe.

The hacked WADA records indicate that from 2011-13, Wiggins was given a permit for medically required use of triamcinolone. The therapeutic use exemption that has been the subject of the most scrutiny came before he won the Tour in 2012.

Separately, the agency UK Anti-Doping started an investigation after The Daily Mail reported that an official from British Cycling, the governing body that Brailsford once led, flew to Switzerland and then drove two hours to France to deliver a package for Wiggins in 2011. The next day, Wiggins secured the overall victory in the Critérium du Dauphiné, an Alpine stage race. British Cycling has confirmed that the package contained medical supplies but, along with Sky, declined further comment, citing the investigation. Brailsford did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Wiggins' agent. Brailsford and Wiggins, however, have given extensive interviews with some British news media outlets about the triamcinolone permits.

In them, Wiggins said that he suffers so badly from asthma and hay fever that antihistamines, the conventional allergy treatment, did not bring him relief. According to Wiggins, a specialist doctor recommended by the team's medical staff said that intramuscular injections of triamcinolone would end his symptoms.

"One thing I would constantly have is a blocked nose," Wiggins told The Guardian. "People would say, 'Have you got a cold, you're not ill, are you?' No, I've got hay fever, allergies. It was just a constant thing."

Speaking with the BBC, Brailsford repeatedly said that the treatment was recommended by a specialist and then reviewed, and approved, by the International Cycling Union. "I trust and believe in the integrity of the process," Brailsford said, adding: "But let's get back to the fact that it wasn't being used to enhance performance. This was a recognised treatment."

But teams, including Cannondale-Drapac, which belong to the Movement for Credible Cycling, a group founded in 2007, take a much different approach to corticosteroids, including triamcinolone.

In the interests of the riders' health and to prevent the treatment from providing a performance enhancement, Roger Legeay, the group's president, said that all riders on teams in the organisation who received corticosteroids were then suspended from racing for a minimum of eight days. After that time, they are given a blood test. If it shows the riders' cortisone levels are below normal -- a side effect of corticosteroids -- the suspensions are extended. Through the cycling union, Legeay's group has been pushing for a ban on therapeutic exemption permits for any corticosteroid use.

"Because this is such a good way to improve performance, we have to be very suspicious about that gray area," said Legeay, who, when he led a now-defunct French team, once employed Wiggins as a rider. "It is necessary to have a very clear rule, it is necessary for the credibility of sport."

Vaughters, whose riders have not had any therapeutic exemptions this season, said that the group's rule eliminates the possibility of turning an illness into a sanctioned way to enhance performance through inappropriate treatment.

"With all we've been going through in cycling, it's just easier for us to tell the guy, 'You're sick, take the medicine, you're not going to race for two or three weeks.'"

Ben Wright, a spokesman for Team Sky, said that the team has made changes and, among other things, now requires two team doctors to approve any application for a therapeutic exemption. To date, Sky has received 13 of the permits.

Brailsford, he added, hopes to develop a system that will allow the team to publicise its application. But getting there will require riders to waive medical privacy rights. As for Wiggins, while he has vigorously defended his treatment and denied that it boosted his performance, he did acknowledge that others might not view it as ethical, whatever its legality.

"Straight off, the way cycling is today, yes, yes," he told The Guardian. "Because it doesn't take much in cycling in this day and age now because of what's gone before. So I understand that."