THE BIG RIDE
We join former UCI president Brian Cookson for a ride in the Ribble Valley
As a former president of the UCI, Brian Cookson has had to deal with a few horror shows; he had another last month as we joined him at home for a Halloween ride around Pendle Witch country in the Ribble Valley
It is only fitting that our route should follow the trail of the Pendle Witches
Brian Cookson wears a haunted look as we set off on a Halloween ride around his local roads in Lancashire’s Ribble Valley. He’s been averaging 300 kilometres a week recently but he still can’t get far enough away from the ghosts of his spells in charge of British Cycling and the world governing body, the UCI.
We will discuss these later but, as we head out of the bustling market town of Clitheroe, it’s actually something far more personal and recent that’s weighing on his mind. Earlier this month he had narrowly missed out on becoming a world champion cyclist at the age of 68 at the World Masters track cycling event in Manchester. He’d been man number five in the squad for the over65s team pursuit, but didn’t get a ride.
“Our team qualified and got to the final, but they kept the same four,” he explains. “They went on to win gold, so that shows it was the right decision, but I can’t help feeling disappointed because I’d put all the miles in and didn’t get a medal.” (He did, however, finish in the top half of the field in the points and scratch events.)
It would have been his greatest triumph on the bike since being crowned Lakeland regional road champion as a 19-year-old member of Preston Wheelers in 1971. By the time we reach the crossroads at the top of the stiff climb up Pendle Road, Cookson has regained his bonhomie and breath sufficiently to recall happier times.
“I organised the National Road Race Championships over this climb in 2010 when Geraint Thomas won,” he says. “I had so many arguments with the local farmer who wanted the race banned because it would worry his sheep. At one public meeting, his wife stormed up to me at the top table looking as though she was about to wallop me, but fortunately she calmed down. In the end, it went ahead and we had extra security up here to keep the sheep in their fields.”
Having organised a few local races and worked as Preston Wheelers’ press officer while doing his A-levels, Cookson discovered he was “a better official than rider”. So he carved a path that would take him to the pinnacle of cycling’s global hierarchy by way of British Cycling and a stint as a UCI commissaire – the referees of bike races.
“I operated the lap board for Chris Boardman’s rival Jens Lehmann in the individual pursuit final at the 1992 Olympics,” he says. “Counting laps sounds easy, but I was so stressed out at the thought of millions of people watching on TV. Of course, Boardman won and I was in tears. It’s the only time I’ve ever cried at a bike race.”
Four years later, Cookson was part of an 11man emergency committee that took control of what was then the British Cycling Federation after “the whole board was voted out because things were in such a mess.” Membership was down to 14,000 and the new Manchester velodrome was viewed as a white elephant.
“Because I’d been the most gobby on the committee, I ended up president,” he says. “By the time I left in 2013, membership had increased – it’s something like 140,000 today - and the velodrome had become known as ‘The Medal Factory’. Personally, I’m most proud of the talentspotting structure we put into place that discovered riders like the Yates brothers and Lizzie Armitstead [now Deignan].”
Witch hunt
Today being Halloween, it’s only fitting that our route should follow the trail of Lancashire’s most infamous export, the Pendle Witches. The road swoops down into Roughlee where residents have embraced the village’s notoriety as the birthplace of witch Alice Nutter by adorning the village with broomsticks and pumpkins.
Inevitably, our talk turns to modern-day witch hunts and the recent controversies surrounding British Cycling and Team Sky (now Ineos). On the day of our ride, the medical tribunal into former British Cycling and Team Sky doctor Richard
Freeman is threatening to open a new can of worms. The incident at the heart of the matter – the delivery of the banned substance testosterone to British Cycling’s Manchester HQ – happened on Cookson’s watch, prompting questions about the national governing body’s relationship with a commercial sports team.
“At the time Team Sky was set up, professional cycling was like the Wild West,” offers Cookson. “At British Cycling we were developing riders and having to place them in teams whose ethics and structure we knew nothing about. So when Team Sky started, our idea was to have a pro team that was partnered or managed partly by us, so that our riders weren’t put into any compromising situations. It was mainly about protecting the welfare of our riders, about trying to break the cycle of doping. That’s why we allowed Dave Brailsford, Shane Sutton and [Dr] Steve Peters to be part of both organisations.”
He adds that the idea had been to see Team Sky eventually increase its roster of British riders from a third of its squad to two thirds.
“That obviously hasn’t happened and I’m not sure we would have invested so much time and effort if we had known that,” he says.
Of the Freeman case he says: “Let’s see how it’s resolved. If it turns out it was wrong for us [British Cycling] to be involved with them [Sky], we’ll have to take it on the chin.”
Our talk turns to modern-day witch hunts and controversies surrounding British Cycling