If the cycling body can expect further battering until the truth is laid bare, UK Sport may be charged with forsaking diligence in its obsession with medalsWhen lawyers for UK Sport drew up the contract for British Cycling’s £30.6m funding agreement after London 2012 one clause seemed innocuous enough: “You shall fully communicate and provide information to us regarding the outcomes of the Peter King review.”Four years on, however it is the basis for frosty skirmishes between Britain’s most successful Olympic sport and the body whose millions have allowed it to thrive. Related: UK Sport accuses British Cycling of a ‘complete lack of transparency’ Continue reading...
Time Trial was supposed to document the rider’s last Tour de France but instead became a more compelling study of the waning of an elite sportsman’s powers“And then everything just turned to shit,” David Millar said the other evening, after watching the first half of a documentary film called Time Trial, which records his final season as a professional bike racer in 2014. He was talking about the turning point of a year in which carefully laid plans to close his career with an extended lap of honour completely fell apart.Time Trial records his despair at the discovery that, at 37, the first British rider to wear the leader’s jersey in all three grand tours – France, Italy and Spain –...
Nicole Cooke’s evidence to parliament underlines how ruling bodies like the RFU would be unwise to believe their testing reveals the full extent of dopingYou know the most remarkable thing about Nicole Cooke’s eviscerating evidence to parliament last week, which detailed staggering cases of institutional sexism by British Cycling, lax responses by the authorities when she reported doping violations and poor governance by some of the most august UK sporting bodies? Nobody denied it. Not one person. Not one authority. No one.I saw MPs shake their heads several times while they heard Cooke, an Olympic, world and Commonwealth road race champion, tell her story. Some of them looked incredulous when Cooke explained that, as a 19-year-old, she had gone to...
The man who has seemed such an authoritative presence at the head of Team Sky now looks like a malfunctioning robot having made a number of bad decisionsEarly on a July morning in 2012 a small figure in black cycling kit left the village of Vielha, on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, and set off along the quiet two‑lane road towards the Col du Portillon, a winding tree-lined climb leading to the French border.The kit was that of Team Sky, but beneath the helmet and the sunglasses it was impossible to identify the rider, only to envy him the imminent experience of a picturesque climb. Just under five miles long, with gradients averaging 6.8%, the 4,200ft Portillon has occasionally...
The cycling legend’s entry into the Channel 4 reality show will be seen by some as a sell-out, but we can’t expect our sporting heroes to have impeccable legaciesCycling fans have long been inured to being let down by their heroes. Even still, there has been a special pang of say-it-ain’t-so-Joe disappointment with the announcement from Bradley Wiggins that, starting next month, he will be going head-to-head with Towie’s Lydia Bright and Spencer Matthews from Made in Chelsea to see who’s better at giant slalom. At stake, the prestigious Cowbell Trophy.“Skiing is a big passion of mine,” said Wiggins, revealing that he would be one of 14 competitors on Channel 4’s reality show The Jump. “It was a mix of...