4 Oct 2016

Burling okay with leaked medical documents

12:10 pm on 4 October 2016

The World and Olympic champion sailor Peter Burling says he has no issue with parts of his medical history being made public.

New Zealand sailors Peter Burling and Blair Tuke celebrate winning gold at the Rio Olympics.

New Zealand sailors Peter Burling and Blair Tuke celebrate winning gold at the Rio Olympics. Photo: AFP

Burling and rower Mahe Drysdale are the first two New Zealand athletes to have their medical documents made public by Russian hackers.

The pair were given a therapeutic use exemption or TUE to use prohibited substances.

Burling says he doesn't think he even took the painkillers which were in case he got an infection after having his wisdom teeth removed last year.

"I don't have anything to hide, I had a TUE about a year and a half ago and it was one of the infection fighting drugs in case anything went wrong afterwards and I don't actually think I took it.

"We went through the correct procedure and the doctor that did the operation wanted that available to them just in case something went wrong and Drug Free Sport New Zealand okayed it and it's something that has a pretty rigid process in place on how you go about getting these things and we followed that."

The hacked files show Drysdale, who defended his single sculls rowing title in Rio, took a steroid that acts as an anti-inflammatory and painkiller four times in the past 18 months.

Fancy Bears started their leaks after Russian athletes were banned from the Rio Olympics because of their drug cheating.