Senior figures at UK Sport reportedly told its in-house governance unit to "go easy" on British Cycling because "that's where the medals come from," more than two years before Jess Varnish made public allegations of bullying and sexism, according to Sean Ingle of the London GUARDIAN. Other UK Sport "insiders have also come forward to tell of their deepening unease" about a culture where the "zeal to beat the London 2012 medal haul in the Rio Olympics dominated everything and led to less strict governance checks" than they felt were required. A senior source said, "No one wanted to disrupt the medal factory. It had the status of a special sport." UK Sport said in a statement, "We completely refute the allegation that senior figures in our performance team did not want anything to get in the way of the people deemed to be delivering the medals. This is simply not the case" (GUARDIAN, 3/15).
'EVEN LESS CLEAR': In London, Martyn Ziegler reported scrutiny of the "medical package" sent by courier to France for Bradley Wiggins "has intensified after Team Sky admitted that the same drug said to be in the Jiffy bag had been bought three months before" in a pharmacy just a three-hour drive away. Team Sky said that it had previously bought Fluimucil from a pharmacy in Yverdon, Switzerland, in April '11. In June that year, Team Sky medic Richard Freeman ordered a package of "what he said was the same legal drug to be collected from British Cycling in Manchester and taken by courier via train to London," then by air to Geneva and finally in a "hire car to La Toussuire in France to be given to Wiggins." Culture, Media & Sport Committee Chair Damian Collins: "It makes it even less clear now why the package had to be collected from Manchester and flown out from the U.K. when we now know it was being sourced from a Swiss pharmacy just two or three hours' drive away" (LONDON TIMES, 3/15).
