Sad circus of cycling and dope trashes trust and reputations
A shadow is being cast over British cycling and a cynic might start to think there is something to hide, writes Matt Dickinson.
IT is not much of a choice, is it? To believe the doctor who admits he lied but claims now to be telling the truth or the coach alleged by the defence QC to be a ‘‘serial liar’’ who storms out of a tribunal under hostile questioning and declines to return?
Watching this wretched mess unfold with claim and counterclaim, heck, a cynic might start to think there is something to hide. Something big, too.
Given the two men, Dr Richard Freeman and Shane Sutton, were in senior positions at British Cycling and Team Sky looking after the wellbeing and performance of some of the most prominent British cyclists of the past 20 years including Olympic champions and grand tour winners, and they are arguing over who ordered testosterone and whether it was for sexual performance or alleged doping, there has been no laughing at repeated discussion of erectile dysfunction, just dismay.
What unfolds daily, grimly, in the Manchester offices where the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service hearing takes place, is weeks from resolution yet already it feels like reputations are being trashed, trust cracked. Memories are in danger of being tainted.
That is something rather tragic. Each session of evidence fuels those who love to say they knew all along cycling was beyond redemption; that they were ‘‘all at it"; that the British cycling boom was somehow too good to be true; that ‘‘marginal gains’’ was a front all along.
I do not believe that to be at all fair on a lot of smart people and some brilliant athletes but it will take the truth – the full truth – for cynicism not to become contagious. And what chance of a clean, unequivocal outcome when this hearing appears to be laying bare so much dysfunction and extreme, unreliable behaviour from key protagonists.
Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that this is a hearing brought by the General Medical Council into whether a single doctor, Freeman, should be struck off for ordering banned Testogel to dope an unnamed cyclist because it feels very much at times a far bigger, broader test of credibility. What must Sir Dave Brailsford and Sir Bradley Wiggins make of this saga, involving men they know so intimately?
What matters primarily is who these testosterone patches were for – and why – and in a hearing that has so far created far more heat than light in explosive exchanges, we hoped that Professor Steve
Peters, the esteemed psychiatrist, might bring some clarity. Instead, papers shaking in his hand, he embarked on his own guessing game.
‘‘We have two men here, one of them is lying,’’ he said. ‘‘It is not my position to say who I believe.’’ He effectively ended up inviting the tribunal to believe neither. ‘‘All I’m saying is I have a man who has lied to me [Freeman] and another guy who is also untrustworthy [Sutton].’’ As we said, not much of a choice.
If all of this really is about someone’s sex life – Freeman alleges the gel was for Sutton, Peters speculated it was for private use by Freeman – there may not be any personal secrets left, or embarrassment to cover up, by the time these lawyers have finished.
Mary O’Rourke, Freeman’s QC, seeks to paint Sutton as a man who would want anything to help with his sex life by talking of seven children from three or four different partners, prescriptions for Cialis and Viagra, while also suggesting that the coach was allegedly seeing a masseuse at British Cycling. Sutton has already furiously insisted that his wife will vouch for his virility, without chemical enhancement.
As for Freeman, who heard Sutton’s evidence from behind a screen this week to avoid stress, he was berated as a ‘‘spineless drunk’’ by his former colleague. Unable to attend on Thursday because of his fragile state, in his absence it was claimed that Freeman was bipolar, while the tribunal also heard about a ‘‘crisis admission’’ to hospital involving the police around the time of a marital breakdown in 2011. He would ‘‘just disappear’’ at times, according to Peters, and was made anxious by demands to improve record-keeping.
There is no workplace without personality clashes, and HR crises, but this cannot be the image of a world-class centre of sport that many imagined through the years of glorious triumph. Much of this may seem a sideshow but credibility matters. In cycling, it is particularly fragile but British Cycling and subsequently Team Sky set out to restore trust.
They were the team that would do it differently – zero tolerance, remember – but we also had to contend this week with Sutton being accused of being a doper, which he denied. As Brailsford’s right-hand man through so many glories, that would matter. Dopers were banished.
None of this serves the reputation of a team that had already endured the doubts cast by the use of triamcinolone; most notably with injections of the corticosteroid for Wiggins before grand tours in 2011 and 2013 and including his milestone 2012 victory at the Tour de France.
Sutton’s admission last year that ‘‘what Brad was doing was unethical’’ caused palpitations among team leaders, given the need to present an unblemished image. What unfolds in Manchester feels far more dangerous.
Peters insists that he never saw any evidence that testosterone was for a rider but then, in the same breath, admitted a staggering lack of curiosity when informed that Freeman had taken delivery of a banned substance at the velodrome in Manchester, not even asking what it was for.
‘‘We were aware that we beat our chests about competing clean,’’ Peters added. ‘‘I know how hard these athletes tried. This was going to be a clean team, and it was. This [case] has cast shadows on that, which is why I was pretty upset.’’
He is right that it is unfair. It is casting a shadow on many who do not deserve it.
But if he can provide an innocent explanation why, at the end of last year, Sutton was sending a text to Freeman to warn: ‘‘Be careful what you say, you won’t be the only one who gets hurt,’’ then the tribunal has not heard it so far.
‘‘We were aware that we beat our chests about competing clean . . . This was going to be a clean team, and it was. This has cast shadows on that, which is why I was pretty upset.’’ Professor Steve Peters
THE TIMES