Oliver Brown Why it is time Team Sky chief Brailsford got on his bike
Team chief is in limbo after Sky’s decision to quit the sport – but he still insists move has nothing to do with his reign
Sir Dave Brailsford has more in common with Theresa May than perhaps he realises. Both have survived votes of confidence, both have long confused resilience with wilful obstinacy, and both have perfected a mask of stoicism in the face of looming peril.
Admittedly, there are a few entries in Sir Dave’s greatest hits collection that Mrs May, the vicar’s daughter, would be unlikely ever to emulate, not least telling a journalist to “stick it up your a---” or belittling a French counterpart as a small-time mayor.
Still, Brailsford’s insistence that the withdrawal of Sky investment in his cycling team sent no negative message about his own role mirrored May’s “new Iron Lady” masquerade over Brexit. Each has looked this week like a leader in denial.
In one sense, it feels gratuitous to bash Brailsford just as the house he has built appears close to crumbling. But how do you imagine he would behave if the boot was on the other foot? Jonathan Vaughters, the confessed doper who has criticised him for his pretence to zero tolerance on drug cheats, gave some idea. “I suppose I should be bad-mouthing Brailsford today,” he said, “like he did regards me when our team was in jeopardy.” Sky’s kingpin has made enough enemies in the sport to realise that his latest struggles will be mourned with the world’s smallest violin.
If Brailsford can somehow find a backer of comparable clout to Sky in the next six months, it will be a feat to stand comparison with any of the team’s six Tour de France triumphs since 2012. The search could scarcely come at a worse time, with big business paralysed by Brexit angst and unwilling to take any major commercial decisions, let alone those worth £180million over 10 years. For the man often credited as a cycling alchemist, Sky’s desertion leaves him facing a defining test.
Trouble is, Brailsford remains impervious to the idea that this sudden limbo has any connection to him. “I don’t think there’s anything negative at all,” he says. “I just see the positives.” His argument is that the parting of ways reflects nothing more than the ebbs and flows of the market, of a kind that smaller rivals have to confront all the time. What stretches credulity, though, is his assertion that it was “not much of a surprise”.
For Team Sky’s recent activity would suggest that the news hit them like a thunderbolt. Fresh from signing reigning Tour de France champion Geraint Thomas to another multi-year deal, they have also tied young Colombian star Egan Bernal to a five-year contract extension, while receiving assurances that funding cycles had been secured until 2024. These were hardly the actions of an organisation fearing for its immediate future. Indeed, Brailsford was so close to James Murdoch, younger son of Rupert and the former Sky chairman, that he received use of a private jet to re-sign Chris Froome at the 2011 Vuelta a Espana. On other occasions, he would sit for long sessions in Murdoch’s office, discussing which little-known prodigy Sky should swoop for next.
That Sky has cut the apronstrings with so little warning, and so soon after its takeover by Comcast, indicates at least an undercurrent of disillusion. And with good reason, given that Brailsford, much as he is loath to admit it, is a lame duck.
Even today, there are two distinct versions of his story. Within the cultish world of professional cycling, it runs roughly as follows: man leaves home in Snowdonia with £600 in his wallet, takes a train to Grenoble to follow his cycling dream, and 35 years later wipes tears from his eyes as a Welshman wins his sport’s greatest prize.
So far, so romantic. Except where once Brailsford was a byword for marginal gains and truckloads of Olympic medals, he is now inseparable from a more shadowy narrative of therapeutic use exemptions, a disgraced doctor, and a failure to offer even a halfway coherent explanation for the contents of a Jiffy bag.
Be in no doubt: any chief executive who had so loudly proclaimed his company’s virtues and values, only to fall so conspicuously short of those standards, would have gone long ago. Brailsford’s steadfast refusal to do the honourable thing, even as the band stops playing, merely smacks of desperation.
Years of unbroken glory bestowed upon Brailsford supreme confidence, a conviction that only he could shepherd Team Sky through troubled waters.
Alas, such hubris has been his fatal flaw, and it has inflicted untold reputational harm. He can play the emotion card all he likes, describing how the solidarity of his cyclists at the latest news will stay with him for ever, but the reality is that Team Sky’s demise will be little lamented beyond his inner circle.
He presides over a behemoth that has by far the biggest budget, pays by far the highest wages, and that holds an unhealthy monopoly on the finest riders. It is one that has raised eyebrows more often than it has stirred the soul.
The likelihood is that Brailsford will soldier on through this shattering setback, defiant to the last. In one way, he is a figurehead fit for the times. At Westminster, after all, clinging on to power by one’s fingertips is regarded as somehow a laudable quality. But in sport, it simply speaks of a man caught in the grip of a grand delusion.