I tend to agree with Parker. In road racing performed outdoors over 3 weeks, with calorific output the same as running 20-odd marathons back-to-back every day, athletes will simply not survive without medical support. While we may applaud riders like Tim Wellens refusing his doctor trying to inject him with Triamcinolone with a TUE to cure his allergies suffered in the race and pulling out instead, if every rider refused medical support throughout the race this way, half the peloton would not exist, sponsors not be happy, riders unhappy they can't race and you would have perhaps a few dozen stragglers for GC in Paris and time gaps so huge there would be no actual GC race whatsoever after two weeks, letalone 3. It would be more like the days of Henri Desgrange where upto 3/4 of the starters never even make it to Paris due to poor health, crashes and injury left untreated without medical support allowed or even considered then and the time gaps from 1st to2nd place over 2 hours lol! As much as we want bread and water racing, it's not possible. Perhaps one day a team will launch that doesn't include any doctors on its staff lol, but they are there for a reason and thats to keep riders healthy in what is a very unhealthy activity without it as seen in non-medical support days of Henri Desgrange etc.
The problem with the TUE system for Corticosteroids especially, is we all know riders like Millar, Jascch, Rasmussen and everyone back then would get their doctor to fake they had a joint or tendon injury, because an Intra-Articular injection of Triamcinolone to fix it, would normally be granted under TUE easily back then. Once granted by UCI, then their team doctor would simply inject the rider intra-muscularly in the bum, not their fake knee or ankle injury and so the rider got the performance benefit of the Triamcinolone and the TUE protection because you can't easily detect route of administration of it. That was abuse of the TUE system, that was using fake injury to apply for TUEs under the premise you will be using an intra-articular injection to treat it and that wouldn't have such performance benefits, but injecting intra-muscularly once granted, knowing you couldn't get caught if tested from the intra-articular you were meant to have.
Wiggins TUE application was at the opposite end. He wasn't using the easy traditional fake injury to hide under an intra-articular TUE, his TUE was for intra-muscular from the beginning, no pretence. Knowing, his TUE would probably never be known about, why go to all that bother with the asthma documentation and trying to get a TUE for an unlikely intra-muscular injection if you don't really need to apply for with such complexity? As we saw with Wellens, clearly team doctors are treating riders for illness and injury in races with it still and I would expect them to be I think, because a rider invested all that time in training and shouldn't have to pull out, just because riders like Millar, Jascch, Rasmussen abused the system by faking what they are actually suffering from legitimately and not trying to abuse the system, but now in fear of us the fans based on the misdemeanours of their previous generation.
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