Disney buy-up puts Team Sky’s future in doubt
Team Sky’s future has been thrown into fresh doubt by the announcement that 21st Century Fox is to sell off US$66 billion ($94 billion) worth of its assets to Disney, including its 39 per cent stake in Sky.
Team Sky are jointly owned by 21st Century Fox (15 per cent) and Sky (85 per cent), with Fox looking to take 100 per cent ownership of Sky next year. It is unclear what the team’s new would-be owners make of the controversy around them.
Disney’s top brass would be hard pressed to be as supportive as James Murdoch. The 45-year-old chief executive of 21st Century Fox and chairman of Sky PLC has been one of the team’s staunchest supporters during their annus horribilis, which took another dramatic twist on Thursday when it emerged that Chris Froome had returned an adverse analytical finding for elevated levels of the asthma drug Salbutamol at the recent Vuelta a Espana.
Murdoch offered his full support for the team at the start of the season when the scandal surrounding Sir Bradley Wiggins’s therapeutic use exemptions, the bullying probe at British Cycling, and the UK Anti-Doping investigation into Team Sky and British Cycling were all at their height.
Given the size of the deal and the scrutiny it is likely to come under, the Disney takeover is set to be at least 18 months to two years away, according to insiders. And Murdoch could be offered a role in the new set-up in any case.
The news came on another painful day for Team Sky, with Froome admitting that his drug-test result was ‘‘damaging’’ and Tony Martin, the multiple world time trial champion, accusing cycling’s world governing body of ‘‘double standards’’ in not provisionally suspending the British rider after his test on September 7.
‘‘There is definitely a double standard being applied in the Christopher Froome case,’’ the Katusha-Alpecin rider wrote on his Facebook page. ‘‘Other athletes are suspended immediately after a positive test. He and his team are given time by the UCI to explain it all. I do not know of any similar case in the recent past. That is a scandal, and he should at least not have been allowed to appear in the world championships [where Froome took bronze].
Martin failed to mention UCI’s rules do not result in the imposition of a mandatory provisional suspension when elevated levels of a specified substance such as Salbutamol are detected in a sample, but it was telling as to the way in which he views the case.
Meanwhile, former UCI president Pat McQuaid has called Chris Froome’s adverse drugs test ‘‘a disaster’’ for cycling.
Four-time Tour de France winner Froome had double the permitted level of the asthma drug salbutamol
There is definitely a double standard being applied in the Christopher Froome case. Tony Martin
in a urine test taking during his victory in La Vuelta in September.
The result is not automatically classified as a positive test and the 32-year-old has not been suspended, but he must provide a satisfactory explanation for the adverse findings or he faces a ban and the loss of his Vuelta title.
Froome has denied any wrongdoing and said he is providing all the necessary information to the UCI, but Irishman McQuaid, president of the world governing body from 2005 to 2013, told BBC Sport Froome would find it ‘‘very hard to avoid a ban’’.
‘‘The fact is his urine sample was twice the permitted limit. It’s up to him to go and prove that he could have done otherwise.’’
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World No 8 King had little response to the class of Serme – a 13-time PSA title winner, with the 29-year-old from Cambridge rolled 11-4 11-6 11-4 in 29 minutes.
Serme, 28, immediately established her attacking gameplan, racing to a 5-1 lead in the opening stages, tip-toeing round King, who at 1.76m is one of the tallest woman on the PSA World Tour.
King had beaten Serme in a fivegame battle at this year’s US Open, and she began to test her opponent in the second game, exploiting all areas of the court. However, even after hitting a couple of tins, the Frenchwoman didn’t falter, mounting a 9-6 lead and closing out the game.
She then didn’t relent in the third, and after quickly establishing a five-point advantage she took the match in clinical fashion, hitting an irretrievable cross-court winner to secure her place in the semifinals.