Sportsmail can reveal that Sir Dave Brailsford offered this newspaper an incentive in a desperate bid to stop the publication of a story about a mystery package delivered to Sir Bradley Wiggins.

'If you didn't write the story, is there anything else that could be done?' Brailsford asked me.

The Team Sky team principal told MPs on Monday that Sky's doctor, Richard Freeman, had told him the medication for Wiggins was an over-the-counter decongestant called Fluimucil.

Team principal Sir Dave Brailsford (left) with former Team Sky rider Sir Bradley Wiggins

Brailsford appeared before MPs at a Culture, Media and Sport select committee on Monday

Brailsford has said at the hearing that he was told the package contained the decongestant drug Fluimucil

FIND OUT MORE... Read Matt Lawton's exclusive account of Sir Dave Brailsford's attempt to hide the truth here. Advertisement

But a UK Anti-Doping investigation into the package is ongoing and Fluimucil was not mentioned when I first questioned Team Sky, British Cycling and Wiggins's representatives on September 22.

In a private meeting on September 27, Brailsford claimed to me that then British Cycling coach Simon Cope had travelled with the package to the 2011 Criterium du Dauphine — won by Wiggins — to meet Olympic silver medallist Emma Pooley. She was 700 miles away in Spain.

That was not something Brailsford mentioned when asked about the package in September

Wiggins and Brailsford pictured at press conference to mark the cyclist's arrival at Team Sky

THE KEY QUESTIONS ANSWERED ON MONDAY Q) What was in the package? A) Brailsford says: 'I have third-party information. I can only relate what I was told (by Dr Freeman). He told me it was Fluimucil.' Q) Do Team Sky and British Cycling have a record of the delivery? A) Brailsford says a documentary paper-trail 'should be there', adding: 'UKAD have all our invoices for our medical supplies.' Q) Who was the package for? A) Bradley Wiggins. Brailsford says Freeman authorised the delivery, technical director Shane Sutton arranged it, physiotherapist Phil Burt packaged it up and Simon Cope took it to France. Q) Why could the medication have not been procured at a pharmacy in France? A) Brailsford says: 'It's not unusual for stuff to be flown around.' Q) Did Wiggins and Freeman have a private meeting in the treatment room at the back of the Team Sky bus? A) Sutton says: 'I didn't see him (Freeman) there, I'd left, but I was aware he did administer medical treatment.' Advertisement

After the meeting, Brailsford also tried to contest the allegation that Freeman had administered a drug to Wiggins in the team bus.

Brailsford claimed he was gathering evidence that would prove the bus had left La Toussuire before Wiggins had completed his post-race commitments.

However, video footage showed Wiggins beside the bus after the race.

After his testimony before a parliamentary select committee on Monday, this newspaper is obliged to reveal the lengths Brailsford went to in an attempt to kill a story he feared could mark ‘the end of Team Sky’.

First came the offer of an alternative, more positive story. Then possibly a story about a rival team winning races with Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs) — something he did not reveal in the end.

And at the end of the two-and-a-half-hour meeting, Brailsford asked if there was ‘anything else that could be done?’

On Monday, Brailsford responded to a grilling by MPs by claiming Freeman had told him that Cope had travelled from Manchester with an innocuous medicine for Wiggins.

The onus is now on Freeman, British Cycling and Team Sky to provide documentary evidence that it was indeed Fluimucil.