Varnish: I’m being gagged by GB cycling

JESS VARNISH believes she is being gagged by British Cycling after they forbade her from releasing details of the investigation into claims former performance director Shane Sutton was sexist towards her. Sutton resigned in the wake of allegations, first made to Sportsmail, including that he had told world and Commonwealth medallist Varnish to ‘get on with having a baby’ after dropping her from the team. The sprint cyclist and her legal team believe an internal review, which upheld just one of her nine complaints, was a ‘shoddy piece of work’ and want to release it to the public. But British Cycling have instructed law firm Bird & Bird to block leaking of any details, which Varnish claims could undermine the entire investigation. Varnish’s solicitor, Simon Fenton, said: ‘We’ve asked for the full report that was compiled about her complaints, performance data, emails, texts and personnel files, everything they have where she was referred to. ‘But they’ve withheld a lot. What we’ve had has been quite heavily redacted and we’ve been told we can’t use it because it’s confidential. One of Jess’s complaints was that he told her to go and have a baby. What we don’t have is a denial by Sutton that he ever said that. If that’s right and he didn’t deny it how did they come to the conclusion he hadn’t said it? ‘That undermines the other conclusions if that’s right. We have been effectively gagged from telling the world what we’ve got. We’d like Jess to be reviewed as to whether she can get back on the programme. She’s still only 26, at the peak of her powers. It’s still a matter of subjective interpretation. We think that subjectivity was tainted by her public criticism of British Cycling management.’