Richard Freeman claims Shane Sutton told him his career - and Sir Dave Brailsford's and Sir Bradley Wiggins' - was 'finished'

Shane Sutton, the former head coach and technical director of British Cycling, rang the team's former doctor Richard Freeman and told him his career, and those of Sir Dave Brailsford and Sir Bradley Wiggins, was "finished” after they fell out over a series of whistleblowing allegations, Freeman has claimed.

Freeman says Sutton suspected him as the source of an anonymous email sent to UK Sport which included a number of allegations including that Sutton used a British Cycling account to pay for £6,000 worth of cosmetic dentistry and arranged for relatives and business associates to receive sponsors’ road bikes for personal use.

The allegations are included in witness statements prepared by Freeman for his ongoing medical tribunal. The statements were released to members of the media over the weekend.

Freeman faces being struck off for ordering banned testosterone to the national velodrome in 2011 “knowing or believing” it was intended for a rider.

Freeman says he was bullied by Sutton into ordering the Testogel to treat the Australian’s erectile dysfunction. He told the tribunal last week that he initially prescribed Viagra and Cialis to the Australian before Sutton asked him to procure testosterone for him.

Sutton strongly denies that he has ever suffered from erectile dysfunction. He stormed out of the hearing last year midway through his evidence.

Freeman’s cross-examination is due to resume on Monday morning at 10.15am, after which he may be re-examined by his legal counsel Mary O’Rourke QC.

She is likely to focus on the falling out between Freeman and Sutton, with Freeman claiming their relationship “deteriorated” badly in 2015 following a number of disagreements.

In particular, Freeman alleges that Sutton asked for “a referral to the British Cycling official dentist, and when an invoice for £6,000 for cosmetic dentistry was later received I refused to sign this off and confronted him. He later told me he had paid it through another British Cycling account”.

Freeman also alleges that he complained to British Cycling’s board after “Mr Sutton's awarding of funding to a masseuse to undertake a physiotherapy degree, without consulting myself or Phil Burt who was in charge of physiotherapy. He threatened to sack both of us when we objected to this”.

Their most serious falling out, however, occurred after a whistleblower email sent to UK Sport by an anonymous party in early 2016 “describing Shane Sutton's behaviour, mainly about misappropriation of resources”.

“These abuses were common knowledge to the staff of the WCPP, but we all felt powerless to stop it,” Freeman says in his witness statement. “Many staff in favour would receive sponsors' road bikes for personal use, as did relatives and business associates of Shane Sutton.”

A spokesman for British Cycling said: “These allegations were included in the findings of the Cycling Independent Review (CIR) and the Moore Stephens Financial Audit, commissioned by British Cycling in 2016.

“In response to the findings, the then British Cycling board apologised for areas in which we had fallen short of the standards expected of us and implemented an action plan to meet all of the recommendations.”

Freeman says Sutton got wind of the whistleblower letter and assumed it had come from either himself or Burt: “He said he knew it was one of us and demanded we hand over our phones and computers. We refused. Later he said to me it was either me or I was covering for Phil Burt and I had to tell him. I refused and he said that was it, 'you're finished'”.

Freeman even suggests that the infamous jiffy bag story, which broke in the autumn of 2016, triggering a year-long UK Anti-Doping investigation, may have been planted by Sutton. Sutton had by then left British Cycling following the Jess Varnish sexism row.

“In September 2016 I received several phone calls from him, in an agitated state, blaming me for his downfall,” Freeman says in his witness statement. “In the last call he told me he had spoken to a journalist who was going to run a story regarding an illegal injection in the bus at Sestriere in 2011, and that we were all finished. He said this related to myself, Sir Dave Brailsford and Sir Bradley Wiggins. I was devastated. I blocked his phone number.

“Shortly after he called me from his partner's phone. I answered it as she had previously asked for medical advice. It was Shane Sutton ranting and threatening, I put the phone down and blocked that number. When the Daily Mail story broke in Oct 2016 regarding the race in Sestriere in 2011, it came as no surprise that the allegation was made about me and I assumed that Shane Sutton was the source.”