UCI lax on TUE use, says Boardman

LONDON: Cycling chiefs must do more to erase suspicion over Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs), according to Britain’s former Olympic champion and Tour de France yellow jersey wearer Chris Boardman.

Bradley Wiggins’s use of TUEs while with Team Sky, made public by cyber-hacking website Fancy Bears last year, raised uncomfortable ethical questions about riders competing after taking prohibited drugs for medical conditions.

Wiggins, the 2012 Tour de France winner and Britain’s most decorated Olympian with eight medals, retired last year under something of a cloud after it was revealed he had taken corticosteroid triamcinolone for asthma.

The Briton broke no anti-doping rules, however, and Boardman says the situation could have been avoided.

“I don’t think the world governing body (UCI) is doing its job if they are allowing a situation where something is legal but not ethical,” Boardman, who paved the way for Britain’s rise as a cycling force by winning the individual pursuit at the 1992 Olympics, told Reuters at the London Cycle Show.

“We have focused on the individuals but the people who govern what happens with TUEs have been allowed to sit in the background and let it trundle on.

“How did we get to the situation where something is legal but people don’t feel it’s moral?”It’s like tax evasion and tax avoidance. Just because you get away with it, doesn’t make it okay.”

Boardman said he only ever requested TUEs twice in his long career, once for low bone density and once while recovering from breaking his ankle in six places. Both were turned down.

He said riders needed to be protected from the rules. “If everybody has got exercise induced asthma, it doesn’t seem to be right really.”