This is surely the end of the road for Brailsford

The latest allegations could also be terminal for Team Sky, writes Tom Cary in Apeldoorn

Having been parked right next to each other all week, it was noticeable that Shane Sutton – now the head coach for the Chinese track team – did not stick around for the final day of the Track World Championships in Apeldoorn yesterday.

It might have just been too awkward what with the British team sitting yards away.

Sutton’s stunning claim to MPS, published this morning, that his former star rider Sir Bradley Wiggins used corticosteroids for “unethical” rather than medical reasons, not to mention his insinuation that the Jiffy bag sent to Wiggins at the 2011 Criterium du Dauphine contained the drug, has effectively lit a fuse under Team Sky and its beleaguered team principal Sir Dave Brailsford.

Can Brailsford survive this? Can Team Sky? Probably not.

For so long they have clung to the line that drugs have only been administered to their riders where appropriate medically. Now here is their former head coach, a man who has been almost a father figure to Wiggins, admitting they effectively cheated.

An already sceptical public’s confidence is wearing paper thin. While there is no conclusive proof yet that any World Anti-doping Agency rules were violated, the drip-drip of innuendo and claim is so damaging.

Soon enough, we will learn whether Chris Froome has been banned for returning an adverse analytical finding for salbutamol. It is hard to see how he escapes a suspension.

And that is before we have even got to the General Medical Council’s investigation into a batch of testosterone delivered to British Cycling’s headquarters in 2011.

As one senior figure within the sport told The Daily Telegraph here at the UCI Track World Championships in Holland: “We have seen this story before. We know how it ends”.