SKY’S OWN GOAL OVER BRAILSFORD
TEAM SKY had to abort plans to issue a statement signed by all their riders declaring support for Sir Dave Brailsford yesterday because of Chris Froome’s continued refusal to offer his unequivocal backing for his beleaguered boss. Despite concerted efforts by Team Sky, nothing could persuade the three-time Tour de France winner to shift from the stance he adopted two months ago. Froome made it clear then he was not happy about Sir Bradley Wiggins’s medical exemptions and Brailsford’s handling of the Jiffy bag controversy. In yet another huge PR blunder by the under-fire cycling team, the Sky hierarchy made the mistake of trying to rally support among their riders in response to a story on Cycling News without first checking with their star rider. After they contacted everyone on the team, a steady flurry of tweets from riders followed, essentially denying the claim that they were considering asking Brailsford to stand down. But from Froome there was only silence. The ultimate objective was to issue a statement yesterday signed by all the riders but Sky bosses could not go through
with the plan, knowing that Froome’s omission would be a further source of embarrassment for Brailsford, who, by his own admission, has handled the crisis badly. Yesterday Froome only tweeted a picture of himself enjoying a trip to a zoo in south Africa with his son.
sky’s concern is that Brailsford’s continued presence as team principal could become a cause of division among the riders themselves. Froome is not the only sky rider unhappy about the damage both Wiggins’s therapeutic use exemptions (TUes) and the UK Anti-Doping investigation into the medical package has done to the team’s credibility.
Yesterday double Olympic champion Geraint Thomas, who had publicly supported Brailsford on Monday, turned his guns on Wiggins and former Team sky doctor Dr Richard Freeman, expressing anger that they have so far avoided any serious questioning. Freeman withdrew from an appearance before a parliamentary committee last week citing ill-health.
‘There are still questions to be answered, 100 per cent, but I know as much you guys know really,’ Thomas told Cycling Weekly.
‘The thing is with Dave, a CeO of a company doesn’t oversee everything that everyone does. You have to delegate and trust people to be the head of those certain areas. I think Freeman and Brad don’t seem to be having too much of the flak, really, it just seems to be us, which also is annoying.
‘That’s the people that this whole thing involves and they don’t seem to be . . . they can swan around getting on with their lives and we are the ones who have to stand here now and answer these questions which we have nothing to do with. so that’s annoying.
‘The frustrating thing is that every article is about Team sky and kind of tarnishes us all with the same brush, which I think is really unfair, and that’s what annoys me the most. For sure, from the guys I speak to on the team, they feel the same.’
sky did attempt to alleviate the crisis yesterday, with Team sky chairman Graham McWilliam tweeting that the board and sky are ‘100 per cent behind team and sir Dave Brailsford as its leader’.
The last time McWilliam issued such support, when he dismissed news coverage of the story as ‘noise’, he was the deputy head of sky News. According to his Twitter biography, he no longer appears to hold that position.
Yesterday McWilliam complained about ‘inaccurate commentary of recent days’, and this followed the publication of a letter, with a detailed document attached, that Brailsford sent to the chairman of the Department of Culture, Media and sport select committee, Damian Collins MP.
Brailsford admitted mistakes had been made, not least in the failure to produce medical records relating to Wiggins during the 2011 Criterium du Dauphine, which ended with the administering to Wiggins of the drug ordered by Freeman and transported in the Jiffy bag.
‘The events of recent months have highlighted areas where mistakes were made by Team sky,’ wrote Brailsford. ‘some members of staff did not comply fully with the policies and procedures that existed at that time. Regrettably, those mistakes mean that we have not been able to provide the complete set of records that we should have around the specific race relevant to UKAD’s investigation. We accept full responsibility for this.’
In trying to explain the absence of records, sky claimed Freeman ‘struggled’ to get to grips with a new computer system for collating team medical records; so much so that in 2012 they appointed a female medical student to serve as his ‘administrative assistant’.
Freeman told UKAD investigators that the package contained a legal decongestant called Fluimucil and sky insisted the form in which the doctor said it was administered to Wiggins would not have been available over the counter in France. That said, they still have no records to prove that was what the package contained.
They did contest, however, the claim that ‘ 70 ampoules of triamcinolone’ — the controversial steroid at the centre of the Wiggins TUe storm — ‘were ordered by Team sky in 2011 alone’.
‘This is incorrect,’ said the Team sky statement. ‘Our records indicate that 55 ampoules of triamcinolone were ordered by Team sky . . . between 2010 and 2013. Only a small proportion of this was administered to Team sky riders. According to Dr Freeman, most was used privately to treat Team sky and British Cycling staff.’
UKAD have not received evidence of when and to whom all the triamcinolone was administered. In their statement yesterday, sky did not refer to claims of an accidental delivery of testosterone patches to the Manchester Velodrome that is home to Team sky and British Cycling. But they did publish a new 14-point anti-doping policy, to show their determination to improve.