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Jiffy-gate: a costly mess that leaves all parties neither damned or cleared | Sean Ingle

Bradley Wiggins rides behind his Team Sky colleagues during the 2011 Critérium du Dauphiné, the race where the controversy began.
Bradley Wiggins rides behind his Team Sky colleagues during the 2011 Critérium du Dauphiné, the race where the controversy began. Photograph: Tim de Waele/Corbis via Getty Images

A 14-month investigation. Thirty‑seven witness interviews. A significant hit on the UK Anti‑Doping Agency budget. Yet still we are no closer to knowing whether the package delivered to Sir Bradley Wiggins at the Critérium du Dauphiné in 2011 contained a legal decongestant or a banned drug. Or to hearing from a key witness, Dr Richard Freeman, whose illness seems to have provoked a nine-month silence worthy of a monk.

But we can be sure of this: few parties come out well from the Ukad investigation, which was closed on Wednesday. Not Team Sky or British Cycling, whose response to the initial claims the five‑times Olympic champion had been administered with the powerful corticosteroid triamcinolone in competition, was confusing and unclear. And certainly not Freeman, whose lack of basic medical record keeping had the fortunate consequence of Ukad dropping its case. All parties, including Wiggins, have been left in an uneasy limbo, not damned or cleared. Yet.

Ukad, too, is diminished by this result. It is a defeat for the organisation, make no mistake about it. On Tuesday the sports minister, Tracey Crouch, promised parliament that it was one of the best anti-doping agencies in the world. Yet 24 hours later those platitudes looked as hollow as a drum. If an anti‑doping agency cannot successfully carry out big investigations, then we should legitimately ask what is its purpose?

Earlier this week, Ukad made a lot of noise about banning a 60-year-old amateur cyclist for a positive test after he came 95th in a local race. But in reality that was the equivalent of a striker going wild over a goal in a pre‑season friendly against a Sunday league outfit. Stuff like that does not matter. It is doing it in the big games that counts. Ukad has also set worrying precedent by terminating its investigation because of a lack of medical records as it could become a get-out-of-jail card for others.

Most of all, this was a stark reminder of us how flimsy Ukad’s resources are. Incredibly it has only two investigators, the equivalent to a quiet village police station. And no powers to access medical and financial records, conduct video surveillance, or apply the squeeze.

No wonder some believe that dopers – and those who aid them – should face criminal charges. This year Nicole Cooke, the 2008 Olympic road race champion, told parliament that only the actions of the Italian police, who had such powers, led to the arrest of her directeur sportif William Dazzani, who she claimed had offered her performance-enhancing drugs when she was a young rider.

Yet when addressing the anti-doping situation in the UK, Cooke was damning. As she told parliament: “The measures and schemes to fight the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs are inadequate and ineffective – [it’s] the wrong people fighting the wrong war, in the wrong way, with the wrong tools.”

The government and Ukad are against criminalisation for a number of reasons – including the fact the burden of proof in criminal courts is higher and it takes longer for cases to get to court – and there would be no chance of getting primary legislation through a parliament mired in Brexit. Clearly, however, anti-doping agencies need more powers. At the moment they come to a gun fight with a pea-shooter.

A tailored review into Ukad, announced by Crouch in March into its efficiency, effectiveness and governance will no doubt consider whether it needs more money to do its job. But there is a catch-22 at work here. Why give an anti-doping organisation more money when it has not proven effective with the budget it has got already?

Meanwhile, as the chair of the digital, culture, media and sport select committee Damian Collins has rightly pointed out, it would be wrong to allow Sky and British Cycling off the hook.

Remember the Team Sky principal, Dave Brailsford, wrongly claimed the British Cycling courier Simon Cope had not travelled to France to deliver that package to Wiggins but to see Emma Pooley – an explanation that quickly unravelled when it was revealed she was competing in Spain.

Brailsford also said Wiggins and Freeman had not been together on the Team Sky bus at the Dauphiné – only for video evidence to prove they were. It also took weeks for Team Sky to state the package for Wiggins contained the legal decongestant Fluimucil. Before then Brailsford had also tried to persuade the Daily Mail to bury the story because he feared it could mark “the end of Team Sky” while the head of Ukad, Nicole Sapstead, told parliament her investigators had met with “resistance” in their inquiries.

Brailsford’s former No2 Shane Sutton told parliament that Wiggins was treated at the Dauphiné “for a long‑term illness”, saying he had allergies for years, before changing his mind and saying it was possibly a chest infection.

As far as British Cycling is concerned, do not forget Ukad have been unable to establish why products containing testosterone were delivered to its premises.

Even Wiggins’s statement in response to Ukad closing his case was unsatisfactory. On the one hand, he criticised the medical team around him for not doing their jobs and keeping proper records. On the other, he praised Freeman. Like a lot of things about this case, it does not quite add up.