Sky’s demise ‘will throw spanner in the works’
Bradley Wiggins has warned that those rejoicing at Sky pulling the plug on its cycling sponsorship should be careful what they wish for as the sport will be “worse off” if the team folds.
The 2012 Tour de France winner has had a difficult relationship with his former employers, and particularly with team principal Dave Brailsford, over the past few years.
In 2016, Wiggins’s three legal therapeutic use exemptions for the corticosteroid kenacort were leaked as part of a data dump by hackers Fancy Bears, which led many to question his ethics.
And the five-time Olympic champion then found himself at the centre of a UK Anti-Doping inquiry surrounding a Jiffy bag allegedly containing the same substance, which was delivered to him at a race in 2011.
No charges were ever brought. But Wiggins has regularly criticised Brailsford, blaming Sky for their failure to keep accurate medical records which could have cleared his name. However, he struck a conciliatory note regarding the news of Sky PLC’s impending departure.
“People need to be careful what they wish for because if Sky go now the sport will be worse off,” Wiggins said on Talksport.
“[Cycling] won’t disintegrate but it won’t have the profile it has enjoyed now. This day was always going to happen because the sport is so backward in some ways, the people that run it. It’s not corrupt but it’s so backward. There’s no money in the sport.
“Sky brought money but I’m talking about sponsors in general aside from Sky. Rather than be grateful for a company like Sky, people just hammered it. The money they’ve put in over the last 10 years... is incredible, and the timing of that with the generation of cyclists and what Dave wanted to do, we may never ever see it again.”
Asked whether he thought Brailsford would be able to find another backer, Wiggins replied: “I can’t envisage them getting a sponsor like Sky – a UK company, wherever it’s owned these days but based in London – the size of the company coming and doing that for cycling. To replace them to carry on and cover the wage bill and the budget will be a tough thing to do...
“It’s the end of an era in some ways. That’s not to say the team can’t carry on but it’s whether they can find a sponsor with that much money to keep everyone there.” — The Daily Telegraph
People need to be careful what they wish for because if Sky go now the sport will be worse off