Blazin' Saddles: Team Sky dodge bullet, UKAD firing blanks, Bradley Wiggins on the source

A lot has happened in the past year or so. Britain has shot itself in the foot by voting to leave the EU; a reality TV star has become the most powerful person in the world; Chris Froome has won two Grand Tours; Peter Sagan has won a third World title; Shane Sutton has even taken up a coaching job in China.

One thing that hasn't happened, however, is a satisfactory conclusion to the 14-month investigation into the contents of a medical package delivered to Bradley Wiggins at the 2011 Criterium du Dauphine.

This was the story that rocked the world around about the time Wiggo decided he'd like to skate on thin ice - and assume the celebrity lifestyle he so loathed - in The Jump (a career choice that proved about as successful as his quest for the maglia rosa in 2013).

After 14 months of frenzied debate, pages and pages of column space, and a fallout bigger than that from Johnny Hoogerland's torn bib shorts, the UK anti-doping agency this week finally announced that, "hampered by a lack of accurate medical records being available at British Cycling," they have closed their investigation into the Team Sky Jiffy bag, claiming that they have been unable to "definitively confirm the contents of the package".

The snail’s pace at which this "thorough and extensive" investigation has been carried out makes light of the expression "in a Jiffy".

All in all, it's a huge mess. No one has been charged, and yet no one has been entirely exonerated either. Everyone, at every level in the food chain, is at fault; the supposed line that Sky had promised never to cross seems sketchier and more undefined than ever.

Nevertheless, a "pleased" Team Sky have come out bullish, claiming: "We have always maintained that there was no wrongdoing and we have co-operated fully with UK Anti-Doping over the last year."

This full co-operation included admitting they kept no medical files, while their doctor's laptop was stolen while on holiday in Greece – which meant there was no paper trail that may have established just what was in that Jiffy bag, the contents of which UKAD have announced will now be "impossible" to prove.

Flipping things around, this combination of misfortune and poor record-keeping has made Team Sky's definitive innocence equally impossible to prove. Hardly cause for pleasure.

If the contents of the Jiffy bag may now remain as inconclusive as that of Marcellus Wallace's briefcase in Pulp Fiction, you still couldn't bank on it excluding Wiggins' soul.

For those of you who have forgotten the back story – and don't worry, you can't be blamed for not being able to remember things stretching that far back – it was initially alleged that the Jiffy bag flown out from Manchester contained triamcinolone. That's the same weight-loss, power-retaining corticosteroid that Wiggins had been administered on several occasions on a TUE, one that had been bought in bulk by Team Sky as evidenced by the head of UKAD, Nicole Sapstead, during a parliamentary hearing in March.

Not so, according to Dave Brailsford and Team Sky who – weeks after they met accusations with stone-cold silence – eventually insisted that the package contained Fluimucil. That's a legal decongestant that can be bought over the counter in France and for which, as evidenced by Sapstead, there were no records of British Cycling having ever purchased.

Fishier than a hearty Bouillabaisse and a glass of Clamato in the port of Marseille? You could say that. Yet seeing that there was no evidence to the contrary, it was the line we were asked to swallow.

For his part, the man at the centre of the discussion could finally end a year of silence and speak his mind. In a statement posted on Twitter, Wiggins claimed he "welcomed" UKAD's confirmation that no anti-doping charges would be brought. It was the logical conclusion, he said, for "no anti-doping violations took place".

In a liberal interpretation of legalese, Wiggins also said: "No evidence exists to prove a case against me and in all other circumstances this would be an unqualified finding of innocence."

Wiggins described the past year – in which he managed to launch his TV personality via advertisements for Skoda and appearances on The Jump and The Andrew Marr Show, during which he took up rowing with a view to competing in the next Olympics, and during which he starred on the speaker circuit while memorably calling Victoria Pendleton a "bit of a milkshake" – as a "living hell for me and my family, full of innuendo and speculation".

There were times, Wiggins said, that "it has felt nothing less than a malicious witch hunt".

After which, Wiggins called for a witch hunt of his own – demanding that UKAD revealed who was the source who opened Pandora's Jiffy box in the first place.

Indeed, Wiggins said he was "disappointed" by some of the statements made by UKAD and dismayed by being cast as the villain, claiming he handed over all the information they requested, but was never contacted again for questioning following an initial 90-minute interview back in November 2016.

"During my career, like any other professional sportsperson, I relied heavily on the professional team around me, whether that be coaches, trainers or more pertinently medical practitioners," he said. "The medical documentation concerning my treatment was something absolutely out of my control."

Wiggins added: "Had the infrastructure for precise record keeping been in place this investigation would have never started."

What, like Dropbox? The online file-sharing tool would have been an ideal piece of infrastructure which Sky could have employed, after all. But then Dr Richard Freeman – the British Cycling and Team Sky doctor who administered the offending package – had admitted to not understanding how to use Dropbox, hence the lack of a paper trail in the first place.

It was Freeman's failure to upload the medical records to his computer – which was then stolen while on a subsequent holiday in Greece – that muddied the waters further. When called to give evidence at the enquiry, Freeman was unavailable owing to ill health.

"I have always felt, and still feel, that he [Dr Freeman] is a very good physician and treated me and others with great care and respect," said Wiggins, having earlier savaged Sky's medical team.

With this fiasco in mind, it was perhaps strange to see Sky, in a combative statement this week, stress how they had "continually strengthened our systems and processes" since launching. Heavens knows how the team functioned in 2010 – armed with Amstrads, Nokia 3210s and a fax machine?

British Cycling were more conciliatory and contrite in their response to UKAD's findings, admitting the "blurred boundaries" between the national cycling body and Team Sky "led to some failings in the way that processes and people were managed". The same processes that Sky claim to have been strengthening for years prior to this case.

In his defence Wiggins, nevertheless "pleased" with the outcome, agreed that there were many questions that remained "unanswered". Yet these questions centred on unmasking the source and – in a clever bid to appeal to the British taxpayer – discovering how much money had been spent on such a futile investigation.

Most of us can think of some other questions.

For starters: why did Brailsford try to silence Matt Lawton – the journalist who broke the story – with the sweetener, "If you didn't write the story, is there anything else that could be done?"

And some more: did the Greek police ever find out what happened to the stolen laptop? Were any charges made? Why was there no mention of Wiggins' life-long struggle with asthma and allergies in his autobiography? And why did these allergies – which were treated with the corticosteroid Kenacort – seemingly coincide with the Grand Tours he was trying to win?

And more: why did Brailsford claim the Sky staff member who delivered the package, Simon Cope, was in France to visit the British cyclist Emma Pooley, when she was racing in Spain at the time, and was not even being trained by Cope during that period.

And what of those testosterone patches that were wrongly delivered to British Cycling headquarters? Something else that has seemingly been brushed under the carpet.

Of course, the burning question still left unanswered is still, quite simply: what was in the Jiffy bag? Sky maintains it was Fluimucil, but can't prove it, while Wiggins claims he doesn't even have any recollection of the package.

There may very well be entirely innocent answers to all of these questions – but if there are, isn’t it in everyone’s interests to bring them to light?

So, what happens now? Well, UKAD have passed on all their findings to the General Medical Council, who can proceed as they see fit. But it's unlikely the GMC will be able to shed any new light on the case – leaving Sky and Wiggins unaccountable for the whole episode.

But the MP Damian Collins, who chaired the Culture Media and Sport select committee earlier in the year, claims the findings were far from an exoneration of anyone. Collins said this week that, for all his outrage at his treatment, a "cloud now hangs over one of our greatest Olympians".

Collins added that he was in favour of criminalising doping in order to bypass UKAD's obvious Achilles heel – namely that the body has no legal authority to compel anyone to speak.

For if this episode has shown anything, it's that UKAD relies on the good nature and willingness of people to co-operate – including, sometimes, people who are unable to do so.

As for Wiggins – the "living hell" may not be over.

We now leave you with a quote from Puff Daddy in Black Rob's song, Down the Line Joint:

It will be interesting to see what the subsequent manoeuvres are between the protagonists in this, well, iffy story – who will attack and who will retreat next? Answers on a postcard, or in the web's metaphorical Jiffy bag, below.