Dave Kidd: British Cycling and Team Sky has the world asking them difficult questions – but we STILL need answers

IT STARTED at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing — a city of nine million bicycles, with none as fast as the British ones.

Then on to the Tour de France, where Bradley Wiggins, the kid from a Kilburn council estate, fulfilled Dave Brailsford’s dream of a clean British rider in the Yellow Jersey on the Champs-Elysees.

It continued before an ecstatic home crowd at the London Olympics in the golden summer of 2012.

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But by the time we reached Rio last year, worldwide whispers around Britain’s domination of cycling’s greatest events were growing louder.

French sprint coach Laurent Gane wanted to know the ‘recipe’ of ‘our neighbours’, claiming Britain ‘do nothing extraordinary for four years and once they arrive at the Olympics they outclass the rest of the world’.

German world champion Kristina Vogel said: “It seems they (the British team) do nothing for three years, then they start at the Olympics and kill us.”

Aussie Olympic champ Anna Meares said: “The British are just phenomenal when it comes to the Olympic Games, and we’re all just scratching our heads going, ‘How do they lift so much when in so many events they have not even been in contention in the World Championships?’ ”

Sore losers? Sour grapes? That’s what most Brits wanted to believe as our track cyclists played a major role in Britain achieving its greatest modern Olympic performance in London and then reaching an astonishing second place in the overall medals table in Rio.

When asked about the secrets of his team’s success, Brailsford — the godfather of British Cycling and then of Team Sky — tends to talk about peaking at the right moment thanks to a culture of ‘marginal gains’.

Thanks to an obsessive attention to detail.

But, as was pointed out in a House of Commons committee yesterday, this ‘attention to detail’ did not extend to keeping detailed medical records.

Suddenly, Team Sky — launched amid growing claims about Lance Armstrong with the expressed intention of proving that cyclists could win clean — does not seem so concerned about proving stuff.

Nicole Sapstead, the head of UK Anti-Doping (UKAD), has been investigating allegations of wrongdoing in British cycling since September — when it received information about a package delivered to Brailsford’s top medic Dr Richard Freeman, for Wiggins, after a race in France in June 2011.

UKAD spent 1,000  hours on their probe, yet still do not know if the legal decongestant Fluimucil was in the infamous Jiffy bag —  as Freeman claimed —  as opposed to the original allegation  it contained  banned steroid triamcinolone.

Why not? Because there is no paperwork. When asked why Freeman, who cried off sick from yesterday’s hearing, cannot produce evidence that he gave an unlicensed product to Wiggins, which would have been correct medical practice, Sapstead said: “There are no records.

“He kept medical records on a laptop and he was meant, according to Team Sky policy, to upload those records to a Dropbox the other team doctors had access to.

“But he didn’t do that, for whatever reason, and in 2014 his laptop was stolen while he was on holiday in Greece.”

No paperwork. A stolen laptop. A sicknote for the doctor. And doubtless the dog ate British Cycling’s homework.

Dr Freeman does seem to be a terrible old scatterbrain. Not that we ought to mock the afflicted. Freeman must have been very poorly to have missed such a red-letter day in Parliament.

Simon Cope, a British Cycling coach who is now sports director of Wiggins’ own team, was well enough to attend.

Cope delivered the Jiffy bag from Britain to France but didn’t ask what was inside the package he put into an aircraft hold and then ferried through customs.

He insisted he had no reason to  “question the integrity of our (Britain’s) governing body”. Because who would ever do that? Except for much of the rest of the cycling world.

An MP suggested Cope was ‘stitched up’ and ‘left out to dangle’ by former colleagues.  His evidence did not make it sound like he was adhering to a culture of ruthless, professional attention to detail.

It sounded more like, “I’ll get the suitcase from the van and if you want the best ’uns, but you don’t ask questions, then brother, I’m your man.” Whatever was in the Jiffy bag, Wiggins has taken the banned Triamcinolone.

We know this because the Russian hacking group Fancy Bears told us of three Therapeutic Use Exemptions he had taken before three major races,   without breaking any rules.

The Fancy Bears also leaked uncomfortable allegations about Sir Mo Farah’s American coach Alberto Salazar, both of whom deny any wrongdoing.

The Russians felt hard done by when singled out before the Rio Games for their culture of systematic doping.

And after Britain’s stunning success, they have been doing some digging into such a remarkable achievement.

Meanwhile, those widespread whispers don’t sound like whispers any more. The accusations against British cycling are becoming deafening.