British Cycling’s lead physiotherapist, Phil Burt, has confirmed that he is cooperating with the UK Anti-Doping investigation into allegations of possible wrongdoing within cycling, although it is not clear whether he has spoken to the two investigators from Ukad who visited the Olympic team base on Friday.
The inquiry, which has now been linked to three BC staff members, started when questions were raised about a package containing a “medical substance” which was delivered to the then Team Sky doctor Richard Freeman at the end of the Critérium du Dauphiné stage race in June 2011. The team vigorously deny any wrongdoing.
In a statement issued on Wednesday to the cyclingnews.com website through the British Cycling press office, Burt said: “I am happily and fully cooperating with the Ukad investigation and look forward to their report. To respect the integrity of their investigation I will not be commenting further.” Burt did not respond when contacted by the Guardian, and British Cycling would not comment.
Burt’s statement followed an interview in which Simon Cope, the former British Cycling women’s coach, said the physio might have been the person who gave him the package which Cope then delivered to Freeman, who was working for Team Sky at the Dauphiné. Asked by cyclingnews where the package had come from, Cope said: “It came from British Cycling. Phil Burt. Either he gave it to me or someone from the office did. I can’t really remember. I also took them [Team Sky] some spare clothes.”
Cope, who is directeur sportif at Sir Bradley Wiggins’s eponymous team, confirmed in the interview he will also cooperate with the investigation. “I’ll tell them what the truth is. I know what the truth is. There’s nothing untoward going on.”
Burt, who attended the Rio and London Olympic Games with the GB squad and was one of the brains behind the team’s campaign to eliminate saddle soreness among its cyclists, would neither confirm nor deny that he gave the package to Cope. The burly physio has been a British Cycling fixture for several years, working across both the Olympic team and Team Sky.
Wiggins will not start next week’s Abu Dhabi Tour in which his team is racing, because, according to his spokesman, the race was not on his schedule although he was involved in its publicity material. The multiple Olympic medallist is to concentrate instead on Six Day track races in London and Gent.
Wiggins – who is not understood to be a subject of the Ukad inquiry – has been caught up in controversy recently after computer hackers revealed that he had had three injections of the corticosteroid triamcinolone. The cyclist and Team Sky have strenuously denied wrongdoing, insisting that the injections were to treat his pollen allergies. The International Cycling Union has stated that the rider and the team were acting within the rules.