Floyd Landis scorns Bradley Wiggins over medical claim for drug use

Floyd Landis, the one-time doper turned informant, has called for Sir Bradley Wiggins to be stripped of his 2012 Tour de France title. The American delivered a scathing assessment of the former Olympic champion and Sir Dave Brailsford, the Team Sky principal, who remained silent amid further calls for his resignation.

That came as Shane Sutton, a former Team Sky coach, turned the heat up on Wiggins and the team’s former medic to explain what drugs the five-times Olympic champion had taken and why.

Landis said Brailsford had to take ultimate responsibility for any drugs taken by Team Sky cyclists. A parliamentary select committee report this week concluded that Wiggins, and possible support riders, had taken performance-enhancing drugs to prepare for the Tour de France under the guise of legitimately treating a medical condition. Wiggins said his use of the powerful steroid triamcinolone before three of cycling’s Grand Tours was to treat allergies and denied crossing any ethical line, as was claimed by the digital, culture, media and sport select committee report.

Landis said Wiggins would definitely have benefited from the substance. “It’s 100% performance enhancing,” the American told the Guardian. “Certain steroids increase body mass and certain ones decrease it. But they are stress hormones designed to help the body respond to fight-or-flight syndrome and increase physical ability in a life-or-death fight and that’s what cycling is. It’s undeniable it gives a performance enhancement. There’s no ambiguity.”



Source: theguardian

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