LUCKY BREAK
Dark clouds hang over Sky but Britain’s richest man is happy to spend £30m a year running them
EXACTLY why their former doctor ordered a batch of testosterone that was delivered to their Manchester HQ remains unexplained but nothing, it seems, can derail Team Sky.
While weeks of preliminary legal argument were preventing lawyers from the General Medical Council interrogating the elusive Dr Richard Freeman in Manchester last month, having levelled the allegation that the banned substance was ordered to enhance the performance of an athlete, Sir Dave Brailsford and his senior riders were persuading Britain’s richest man to replace Sky as their new owner.
It was, sources claim, a brilliantly executed seduction that involved Geraint Thomas taking Sir Jim Ratcliffe for a spin on the climbs out of Monaco.
Ratcliffe and his son are keen cyclists, we are told. And they obviously enjoyed themselves, with the announcement that Team Sky will become Team Ineos next season — as first revealed by
Sportsmail — said to be imminent. It means the biggest budget in professional road cycling, somewhere in excess of £30million a year, is guaranteed, while it is suggested there will be an opportunity for Brailsford to branch into other sports.
Perhaps he will lend his expertise to Sir Ben Ainslie, who will lead Ineos Team UK in their pursuit of the America’s Cup in 2021 with the help of £110m invested by a 66-year-old, who at one stage last year also had his eye on Chelsea FC.
As chairman and founder of a petrochemicals giant that has made him £21billion, Ratcliffe is no stranger to controversy.
Last month he attacked the government’s fracking policy on behalf of Ineos and last year it emerged he was moving to Monaco’s tax haven. Two months earlier, he was knighted by the Queen for ‘services to business and investment’.
Within his own team at Ineos, concerns were apparently raised. John Mayock heads up the sports division at the Ineos offices in London and one imagines the former Olympic middle-distance runner would have been concerned by the whiff of scandal that has dogged Brailsford and his all-conquering cyclists of late. Mayock was unavailable for comment.
Only 12 months ago, a parliamentary report delivered its damning verdict amid the revelations about a Jiffy Bag, Dr Freeman’s lost laptop, his shockingly-poor record-keeping and the medical exemptions that enabled Sir Bradley Wiggins to use a powerful corticosteroid before securing the first of Sky’s six Tour de France victories.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport concluded Team Sky had ‘crossed an ethical line’. What they could not say, is that the team had committed an anti-doping rule violation and, while the now postponed Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service hearing for Dr Freeman could yet lead to a new UK Anti-Doping investigation, that remains Team Sky’s best defence against those who doubt their integrity.
It is a position many find convenient. It enables the FA to tap into Brailsford’s brain while Gareth Southgate sports a personalised Team Sky shirt and hangs with cycling’s self-styled management guru at the Super Bowl.
Just as it allows UK Sport’s director of performance, Chelsea Warr, to tell aspiring athletes that it was Brailsford who was the trailblazer.
On the track at the Olympics, he set the gold standard, said Warr, her statement proving that for UK Sport medals remain of paramount importance, whatever they say about athlete welfare.
Now that the cash has been secured, the titles are sure to keep rolling in for Sky. Chris Froome is expected to regain top spot on the podium in Paris from Thomas this summer and already lined up to succeed him is Egan Bernal , a young Colombian who might be better than all three British Tour winners.
Clearly that vision has been sold to Ratcliffe. Unless, of course, those GMC lawyers ever have the opportunity to quiz Dr Freeman on what the hell was going on with that testosterone.