Allegations about the American coach are not going away, which means both he and Farah must engage more fully with those who are challenging themThe last time I spoke to Alberto Salazar, in a hotel lobby in Beijing, he offered some simple financial advice. “You should put your money on me being cleared,” he said, smiling. “It’s a winning bet.” That was in August 2015, in the midst of a blizzard of allegations and an investigation by the US Anti‑Doping Agency against him. Yet 18 months later he remains in limbo, neither damned or saved, still awaiting his fate. And there, right beside him, stands Sir Mo Farah and British Athletics.Who would have predicted this in June 2015, when the allegations...
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...
Culture committee questions transparency in UK cycling after facing uphill climb to tease out facts about the most infamous Jiffy bag in the sportFor three hours in the Thatcher room in Portcullis House the air had all the ease of a dentist’s surgery as the committee for culture, media and sport slowly prised, like recalcitrant teeth, a series of facts from Sir Dave Brailsford, Shane Sutton and the British Cycling chairman, Bob Howden, about the most infamous Jiffy bag in cycling, an envelope delivered to Dr Richard Freeman at the Critérium du Dauphiné in 2011 that has come to symbolise Team Sky and British Cycling’s lack of transparency.The governing body and its offshoot professional team live by process; the session...
Sir Dave Brailsford and Shane Sutton will appear before MPs on the culture, media and sport select committee on Monday. What should they be asked?Back when Team Sky was in utero, Sir Dave Brailsford made a startling statement of intent. “People come into professional cycling and compromise,” he told the Guardian in 2009. “We can’t compromise.” He was discussing specifically why he was avoiding riders associated with doping, but his words carried a deeper message: others might sprint into grey and black to be successful but Sky’s aim was to be straight as well as successful.There was always a contrast between the public projection of the Sky image – marginal gains, no stone left unturned, glory upon glory – and the...