Brits fight back after French hurl drug insinuations

Thursday, August 21: An insinuation from France's former sprint champion Daniel Morelon, who now coaches the Chinese cycling team, that Britain's medal-winning team might have been using performance-enhancing drugs, has forced the British to declaim loudly that they have nothing to hide.

Morelon said that the British team had seemed to have a motorbike inside them. Dave Brailsford, performance director for the British team, responded yesterday by saying he was inviting the International Cycling Union to investigate "any area" of the team which won a record 12 medals on the track in Beijing - seven golds, three silvers and two bronzes.

"We are willing to pay, you can go and hire whoever you want, they can have access all areas," said Brailsford. "I've said before: come and live with us, see what we do, how we live, how we train, come and look at our training books, all the data we've got gathered and you'll see a slow progression over time and that doesn't happen if you're taking drugs. We're as open as can be, anyone can come and look at what we do."

Chris Hoy (above, with fellow British medallist Jason Kenny), the sprint cyclist who went into the record books on Tuesday when he won his third Olympic gold at these Games, had also made a point of clearing up any notion that the British team might not be clean.

Hoy said the gap between the British and the rest of the world was down to other cycling nations going backwards as much as to Britain's improvement. "We've stepped up to a whole new level since the world championships but what is more surprising to me is not so much that we have done that because there are reasons for that - our preparation, our training and our planning - but that some nations have underperformed and the gap has been exaggerated."

Daniel Morelon isn't the only Frenchman to have questioned Britain's amazing form in these Games. Jean Pitallier, president of French Cycling, is understood to have contacted cycling's international governing body to express his doubts.

Britain's Brailsford, according to a report in the Guardian, said he understood people having doubts, given the sport's recent history, but claimed that his team was "absolutely clean".

To prove how assiduously the team was monitored, he admitted there had been once "incident" recently. "There was an incident - I won't mention names - but there was someone who disappeared for a little while although they turned out to have totally legitimate reasons, and so I phoned up to have them randomly tested. You need to protect the team and the authenticity of the results. That's a professional responsibility of mine."

FIRST POSTED AUGUST 21, 2008