TUEs a distraction from bigger anti-doping challenges, says Callum Skinner

Callum Skinner says the ongoing controversy over therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) is a distraction from the fight against doping. The Olympic gold medallist – who released his medical records last year after being among those affected by the Fancy Bears leaks – says sport has bigger anti-doping challenges.

Skinner was granted TUEs for prednisolone in 2014 and for salbutamol in January 2016. When the details emerged, he responded by releasing his NHS medical records.

These showed he had suffered from asthma since the age of five and had been admitted to hospital due to attacks on four occasions.

"TUEs have started to gain a bit of a bad name for something that is really about athlete welfare," said Skinner during a recent appearance on BBC Radio 5 Live.

"We're generally getting a bit distracted by TUEs. We have far bigger challenges in terms of anti-doping with out-of-competition testing."

It is widely believed that Fancy Bears’ aim was to shift attention with US Anti-Doping Agency head, Travis Tygart, describing the hack as, "just another desperate attempt to distract from the real issue of state-sponsored doping."

Tygart said that Fancy Bears were trying to "smear the reputations of athletes and organisations from around the world who choose to operate with integrity and abide by the rules".

Skinner also commented on Chris Froome’s claim that during his 2015 Tour de France win he rejected a TUE to treat a medical condition on moral grounds.

"Chris is a really experienced athlete. He obviously knows his body really well so I wouldn't be surprised if he and others have inadvertently turned down TUEs – not because of the stigma attached to them, but because it's just not a method that works for them."