Daily Mail report test failure occurred in May on return home from Tour of California
Bradley Wiggins speaks on the Andrew Marr show (Image credit: Andrew Marr show)
The fallout from the Fancy Bears TUE hack continues for Bradley Wiggins with the Daily Mail reporting the 2012 Tour de France champion failed a whereabouts test on his return to the UK in May after racing the Tour of California with his WIGGINS team. Wiggins helped Great Britain to the team pursuit gold medal in August at the Rio Olympic Games to become the most decorated British Olympian.
According to The Daily Mail, Wiggins received a strike for providing 'insufficient information about where he would be' in May. The British newspaper reported that Wiggins 'blamed the time difference and the fact it was an overnight flight' on his return home from the 2.HC race in which he finished 121st.
The news comes just weeks after Wiggins criticised current world champion Lizzie Deignan (née Armitstead) for missing thee whereabouts tests in 12-months, telling The Guardian in September there was "no excuse" for the missed tests.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) whereabouts requires that athletes provide a one-hour slot every day when a doping control officer can test them. An athlete can change that one-hour slot up to one minute beforehand in the case of an emergency. Three missed tests in a 12-month period can result in an athlete receiving a two-year ban.
"It's bloody hard because what happens is you miss one test, they write you a letter, they ask you to explain what happened, and you've got two weeks to put a case forward," Wiggins said in an interview with The Guardian's Weekend magazine. "If you ignore that and then you get another one, you end up having crisis meetings.
"When you're a professional athlete and you're a world champion, there's no excuse, because it's your career. You're setting the standard for everybody else, and to say: 'Cycling wasn't my priority at that time,' is ludicrous, because you nearly lost your career over it. That's just ridiculous. So I can't fathom how that happened."
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Wiggins made no mention of whether he had missed tests in the past or not during the interview. Fellow British cyclists Mark Cavendish, Nicole Cooke and Chris Froome have admitting to missing one test on the past.
While the missed May whereabouts test was the third of Wiggins' career, the Daily Mail reports two previous missed tests occurred in 2005 and 2009, there is no chance the 36-year-old could be banned for the indiscretion.
Wiggins was set to race the Abu Dhabi Tour next week but has decided against appearing in the Persian Gulf to prepare for the London and Ghent six-day races before calling time on his professional road and track career.
