In a further blow to the reputations of British Cycling and Team Sky – now Team Ineos – Richard Freeman, the former chief doctor to the two organisations, was struck off the medical register on Friday after a two-year hearing process at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal, which concluded with a ruling on Thursday that his fitness to practise as a doctor was impaired. The tribunal will either strike him off at once or allow him to continue working for up to 28 days during which he has the right to appeal. Freeman’s QC, Mary O’Rourke, said an appeal to the high court was “highly likely”, with the medic and his legal team taking particular exception to the tribunal’s conclusion that the former British Cycling head coach Shane Sutton was a credible and consistent witness. During the hearing Freeman – who worked for British Cycling from 2009 to 2017, and for Team Sky from 2009 to 2015 – had admitted to or been found guilty of 21 of 22 charges relating to poor record-keeping, inappropriate treatment of non-athletes and, most damningly, a delivery of banned testosterone patches to British Cycling’s Manchester headquarters in 2011. He also faces a UK Anti-Doping inquiry into two charges: “possession of a prohibited substance” and “tampering or attempted tampering with any part of doping control”. The tribunal concluded last week that Freeman had ordered the testosterone “knowing or believing” it was to be given to an athlete, something Freeman has denied. British Cycling said it found the verdict “extremely disturbing”, while Team Ineos has stated the “team does not believe that any athlete ever used or sought to use Testogel or any other performance enhancing substance”, adding: “No evidence has been provided that this ever happened.” Both organisations have yet to comment on the punishment handed down on Friday. The sanctions decision on Friday ruled: “Dr Freeman’s behaviour is fundamentally incompatible with continued registration. The tribunal has therefore determined that erasure is the only sufficient sanction which would protect patients, maintain public confidence in the profession and send a clear message to Dr Freeman, the profession and the public that his misconduct constituted behaviour unbefitting and incompatible with that of a registered doctor. The tribunal therefore determined that Dr Freeman’s name be erased from the medical register.” Much of the two-year hearing centred on the delivery of testosterone patches to the Manchester velodrome in April 2011; the substance is banned under the World Anti-Doping Agency code. Freeman had claimed the patches were intended for Sutton, in order for him to treat impotence, something the former head coach hotly denied at the tribunal. Freeman also told the tribunal he “would not have known” that testosterone could potentially improve an athlete’s performance. The delivery was intercepted by a British Cycling staff member and Freeman was ordered to return it to the vendor, the tribunal was told. It later emerged that Freeman had asked a manager at Fit4Sport, the company that had sold the patches, to help him prove the delivery had been made in error and that they had been returned. He subsequently claimed he had taken the testosterone patches home and flushed them down the sink, but the tribunal noted it had only his word to go on for this. The tribunal stated in its final ruling “that Dr Freeman’s account of having ordered the Testogel for Mr Sutton required it to believe too many implausible, unsupported assertions, as well as having to overlook further falsehoods, on the back of those Dr Freeman had already admitted”, adding: “The position therefore is this. In May 2011, Dr Freeman, the team doctor for a team of elite cyclists … ordered a doping ‘drug of choice’ for that sport. Upon its arrival he was dishonest about why it had been sent, removed it from the Velodrome, and it was never seen again.” The tribunal added it “stretched credulity” that a head doctor at a body such as either Team Sky or British Cycling would purchase a substance that might be banned, yet do so without any record of the patient, the circumstances or the eventual use. Additionally, Freeman destroyed one laptop that might have had medical records on it, while another one he had was reportedly stolen. In a statement released on Thursday, the tribunal concluded “that Dr Freeman’s actions would be considered as deplorable by members of the public and fellow practitioners”, adding: “The tribunal considered that Dr Freeman’s conduct surrounding the order of the Testogel amounted to a long and considered pattern of very serious dishonesty.”