OLIVER HOLT ON TEAM SKY’S SHAME
Caught out in lie after lie, it’s obvious now that the entire concept of Team Sky was a grand illusion, indulged by cheerleaders for too long
WHEN they began to race seven years ago, Team Sky were cast as an angelic voice crying out in the wilderness. They were the wholesome British antidote to Lance and Floyd and Vino. They were whiter than white, cleaner than clean and smarter than smart. Their religion was convenient claptrap called Marginal Gains and their disciples fell hard for it and swallowed its bible whole.
Well, it’s over. Or, after what happened in front of a Parliamentary Select Committee last week added to months of embarrassing revelations, it might as well be. It turns out Team Sky were not what they said they would be because they had cynicism, as well as the corticosteroid, triamcinolone, running through their veins.
Team Sky have not been found guilty of any doping offence. It is important to remember that. But nor is that germane to the scandal that has enveloped them.
We have learned enough in the past few months to know they betrayed their ethos and those who believed in it.
Caught out in lie after lie, wriggling like a fish on a hook, it has become obvious now that the entire concept of Team Sky was a giant masquerade, a grand illusion, indulged by cheerleaders for too long and run by hollow men.
I’m sorry if that sounds harsh but it’s meant to. Team Sky took a lot of us for suckers. The protestations of their general manager, Sir Dave Brailsford, that this was to be a team with spotless competitive ethics, determined to win the right way, seems bitterly funny now. The joke is very much on those of us who believed in his creed and in Sir Bradley Wiggins.
HOW galling it was to hear UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) chief Nicole Sapstead tell the committee last Wednesday that it had taken more than 1,000 man-hours merely to try to find out what was in the Jiffy bag delivered by Team Sky’s courier and then coach, Simon Cope, to their then chief medic, Dr Richard Freeman, at the Criterium du Dauphine, a race which Wiggins won in France in 2011.
It had been alleged, Sapstead said, the bag contained triamcinolone, which Wiggins was later to use legally under the terms of a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE). If he had taken it at the Dauphine 2011, when he did not have a TUE, it would have a constituted a major doping violation.
Freeman had said at a previous time the bag contained the legal decongestant Fluimucil, which seemed odd given that Fluimucil was available over the counter in France. Why send Cope — who is now the boss of Team Wiggins — all the way from England, incurring the cost of a return flight, when what he was supposed to be carrying was available for a few euros nearby?
So much for the idea that Team Sky were going to be transparent. UKAD have had to try to rip the information away from them as they clung to it like a comfort blanket. Suddenly, a search for the truth seemed awfully inconvenient for Team Clean. Sapstead said UKAD’s investigators had been met with ‘resistance’ by them.
Transparent? Please. Don’t make us all laugh. I’ve seen more transparency in a brick wall. If this is a team with nothing to hide, they have done a spectacular job of suggesting otherwise. The physio who packed the bag says he can’t remember what was in it. Cope says he doesn’t know. Wiggins can’t remember. Freeman claimed he was too ill to give evidence on Wednesday and did not attend.
‘We have asked for inventories and medical records,’ said Sapstead of the suggestion from Team Sky the bag contained Fluimucil.
‘And we have not been able to ascertain that because there are no records.’ So let’s get this straight: the team whose raison d’etre was to clean up cycling and show they could win clean did not keep medical records? Yep, that looks good.
It is often instructive to ask one particular question in situations like this: if this were a foreign team with foreign riders, how would we be reacting? Well, we’d be laughing Team Sky out of town. Their excuses read like a badly told joke.
Their evasions are textbook embarrassing. It’s so flagrant it’s actually quite funny. It’s Johnny Friendly versus the Waterfront Commission in On The Waterfront, reincarnated on parliamentlive.tv. And like Friendly’s mob, it appears that the people at Team Sky have no shame.
‘You mean to sit there and tell me that your local takes in $65,500 every year,’ a Commission counsel asks Big Mac, one of Friendly’s hoodlums. ‘And keeps no financial records?’
‘Sure, we keep records,’ Big Mac says.
‘Well, where are they?’ the counsel asks.
‘We was robbed last night,’ Big Mac says indignantly, playing to the gallery. ‘And we can’t find no books.’
Team Sky can’t find no books either. Funny that. Freeman kept the medical records on his personal laptop and failed to upload them to the filesharing service, Dropbox, as all the other team medics had done. And then, guess what? That’s right, it turns out the computer was stolen. In Greece. A few years ago. While Dr Freeman was on holiday with it. I wonder why he didn’t upload his records? Maybe he didn’t know how, although that would seem unlikely given that Team Sky are supposed to be super high-tech and cutting edge and, even for those of us of a certain age, Dropbox isn’t really that complicated. Or maybe he was bone-idle and couldn’t be bothered. Or maybe there was another reason.
Anyway, Freeman didn’t turn up to speak to the MPs. Cope did and probably wishes he hadn’t.
His testimony was described in several contemporaneous reports of proceedings as ‘car crash’. Poor sap. Worried about his job, he was too scared to ask what was in the Jiffy bag. He carried it through Customs blind. If it had gone wrong and if there were a banned substance in the bag, he would have been the fall-guy.
WHEN the self-righteous fall to earth, it is never a soft landing and so it has been with Brailsford. In a private meeting on September 27 last year, Brailsford claimed to Matt Lawton of the Daily Mail that Cope had travelled with the Jiffy bag to France to meet Olympic silver medallist Emma Pooley. She was 700 miles away in Spain.
After the meeting, Brailsford also tried to contest the allegation that Freeman had administered a drug to Wiggins (below) in the team bus. Brailsford claimed he was gathering evidence that would prove the bus had left the Dauphine before Wiggins had completed his post-race commitments. However, video footage showed Wiggins beside the bus after the race.
That’s our leader. That’s Sir Dave. After Sapstead revealed that the triamcinolone ordered by Freeman was either an ‘excessive amount being ordered for one person or quite a few people had a similar problem’, Sir Dave tried to lessen the damage by saying Freeman had given him a shot of it for a knee problem. That’s OK then.
How Brailsford is still in charge at Team Sky beggars belief. Feted for his attention to detail, we are expected to believe a version of events that portrays him assomeunknowing ingenue drifting above the fray. It doesn’t wash. Men like Cope and Freeman have been left to take the blame but it wasn’t them, Sir Dave, it was you.
Cope and Freeman have been left to take the blame but it wasn’t them, Sir Dave, it was you