BRITISH Cycling this week announced an independent review of its chaotic medical procedures as it wilts under the lash of excoriating criticism of flawed anti-doping procedures.

Has this come too late to salvage the reputation of Britain's most successful Olympic sport? It's not just the legacy of Tour de France winner Sir Bradley Wiggins which is in question. Cycling's glorious achievements of recent years are all under a cloud, and risk being tarnished by a controversy which, had it broken earlier, must surely have prejudiced the knighthoods of multiple Olympic champion Wiggins and Sir David Brailsford who orchestrated unprecedented Olympic and road success.

The fall-out threatens even to destroy the reputations of retired cyclists, those from the Brailsford era who retired before this erupted. Brailsford stood down as performance director of British Cycling to head up Team Sky, and is now vilified by many of the very journalists who hailed him as a genius.

Those of us reared in the era when the Tour de France was synonymous with Tour de Pharmacy feel a sense of deja vu. Were we naive to think that could end with Team Sky's repetitive mantra about ethics, zero tolerance, and no needles?

Let's hope not, but the jury is certainly out, for this week the director of medical services at the English Institute of Sport, Dr Rod Jaques, was asked to conduct an independent review. This follows concerns which were intensified rather than allayed by the appearances of Brailsford and other cycling officials before a Culture, Media and Sport select committee hearing: "Combatting doping in sport".

Cycling was Team GB's most prolific medal-winner at the past three Olympic Games, with a total of 38 medals, 22 of them gold. Rowing (paradoxically receiving more lottery funding) won 20 medals (nine gold). Cycling was the second-highest funded discipline, bankrolled by UK Sport for the past three Olympic cycles (Rio, London, and Beijing) with a total of £78.45m. Rowing, meanwhile, received £85.95m.

The cycling governing body and its road-racing arm, Team Sky, have given unconvincing and evasive responses in the wake of allegations surrounding legal therapeutic exemptions for use of what would otherwise have been considered a banned steroid (triamcinolone) by Wiggins.

The select committee established little more than inefficiency and incompetent record-keeping by an organisation held up as a global exemplar of meticulous preparation. That alone was sufficient to generate suspicion in the select committee, and they seized on it.

Its chairman, Damian Collins MP, said the "credibility of Team Sky and British Cycling is in tatters".

Brailsford launched cycling's revival by initiating the concept of "aggregation of marginal gains": striving for tiny percentage improvements in all aspects of preparation. This delivered massive overall gains.

He addressed the obvious – nutrition of riders, training programmes, aerodynamics and weight of components, seat ergonomics, hi-tech skin suits, using wind tunnels and computer data. And then the less obvious: riders taking the pillow that gave them the best sleep with them to hotels, and learning the optimum hand-washing technique to avoid infection.

Team Sky won the Tour within three years and British Cycling won 70% of Olympic titles in 2012.

But huge suspicion has fallen on Wiggins and Team Sky following the revelation of the three asthmatic treatments – immediately before the 2011 and 2012 Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia the following year. His need for these before three major races in three years is a coincidence that defies credible explanation and has provoked the suspicion and criticism of rivals.

Yet the therapeutic exemptions were legal, in line with world cycling rules, and independently approved by UK authorities. More disturbing were the unresolved questions over a package Wiggins received on the final day of the 2011 Criterium du Dauphine which he won. It was transported from Manchester to La Toussuire in a Jiffy bag by a British Cycling employee at a cost of more than £600. The courier claimed to know nothing of the contents.

Brailsford and Dr Richard Freeman said it was a legal decongestant, Fluimucil, yet that could have been purchased without prescription from any of the 10 pharmacies within 13-kilometres of the team's Savoy headquarters. For eight euros, according to sceptical members of Team GB.

This begs serious questions about the journey from Manchester, prompting speculation that it was triamcinolone for which there is no record of an exemption certificate. Dr Freeman told the committee that cycling had no written "medicines management policy or stock-taking system" in 2011. He stated this was not uncommon practice in sports teams at that time.

The laptop in which Wiggins’ medical notes were stored was stolen while Freeman was on holiday, and he had not backed up the data. The failure to record the use of drugs at Team Sky or British Cycling is as staggering as it lacks credibility. It adds up to remarkable lack of attention to detail by a sport not so much obsessed by such information as built upon such detail. And by a sport clearly prepared needlessly to spend hundreds of pounds when pocket change would have sufficed.

The integrity of all staff and riders is now threatened. French, German, and Australian athletes have questioned Team GB riders' performances for years, and the success yesterday of Geraint Thomas, winning the first stage race of the year, the Tour of the Alps, will do nothing to silence them.

Dr Jacques will examine medical and physiotherapy practices, conducting confidential interviews and examining management and record-keeping. He will surely question Team Sky medical staff who blocked a fourth attempt to secure a triamcinolone exemption for Wiggins.

Let's hope it is more robust than the independent review commissioned last year. It was designed to promote the highest standards of ethical behaviour within the sport's World Class Programme. This was in the wake of allegations of sexist and politically unacceptable behaviour by technical director Shane Sutton.

It's terms of reference did not exclude examining the conduct of those charged with anti-doping responsibilities, or record keeping. But it was heavily redacted and there was no mention of these. The rider in question is now heading for the law courts. This doping scandal may yet end there.