Wiggins' win loses lustre after Hayles is suspended

13 April 2012

Not even a gold medal for Olympic champion Bradley Wiggins could entirely divert attention last night from the questions buzzing around the Manchester Velodrome after the suspension of British team-mate Rob Hayles.

Wiggins successfully defended his individual pursuit title on the opening day of the world track championships hours after Hayles, a Commonwealth champion, was formally suspended by UCI, cycling's international federation.

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Withdrawn: Rob Hayles will not compete for a fortnight after anomaly found in his results during routine health check

The official line was that it was on health grounds, but the sport's past misdemeanours in the doping department left suspicions where Britain's most successful sport had hoped only for celebrations.

Wiggins' gold came after BMX racer Shanaze Reade, 19, who won a world title last year in partnership with Victoria Pendleton only eight weeks after riding a track bike for the first time, opened for Britain in seventh place in the 500metres time trials despite a personal best time.

Cuban Lisandra Guerra Rodriguez took gold.

Reade's performance — and Wiggins winning the first of several golds Britain expects from its cyclists over the next four days — was not enough to divert talk around the velodrome about Hayles, 35, a winner of three world golds, Commonwealth gold and three Olympic medals in the last eight years.

Hayles should have started his fifth world championships last night in the individual pursuit.

Instead, he was starting a 14-day suspension during which UCI's doctors will do further tests to determine whether a raised hematocrit level found in his blood was a temporary physiological anomaly or something more sinister.

The first test for the banned drug EPO was conducted immediately.

Hematocrit levels, which measure the number of oxygencarrying red cells, are genetically set.

Hayles' level is normally high, around 47-48, but the UCI decree that beyond a level of 50 the blood is so thick that the rider could be at risk of stroke and heart attacks. Hayles was 0.3 per cent above the line.

The last British rider known to have been above that level was David Millar, banned for two years following a police raid in France that found drugs at his home, after which he admitted taking EPO between 2001-2003.

The sinister possibility that Hayles may have been taking the same short cut to combating fatigue and increasing endurance was dismissed by Britain's performance director David Brailsford.