In unveiling a new type of cycling skin suit at the start of the Tour, Team Sky are both within the rules and, more crucially, making their rivals uncomfortableTeam Sky are no strangers to controversy but the turbulence around their use of the Vortex skin suit, with its panels that enhance airflow past the arms and shoulders, is something they should embrace. There should be no hesitation in criticising Sky when it comes to jiffy bags and triamcinolone but in this particular area, they appear to be in the right and they are doing precisely what they – and all teams that have the resources and backing to so do – should be doing: pushing the boundaries of what is...
It’s all very well eliminating every speck of dust, but eliminating medical records is less easy to get behind – people will wonder which was the more significantTime for another shot of Team Sky, whose functionaries seemingly will not rest until no human can utter the phrase “marginal gains” without deploying sarcastic air quotes. Many will have found themselves at this point some time ago.The relentless curiosity always said to have underpinned the culture at Team Sky and British Cycling is revealed as more selective by the week. Each new revelation of slapdashery is harder and harder to square with the old fables about painting the floors white and getting a surgeon to speak to riders about how to wash...
British Cycling’s performance director fulfilled his brief by providing medals galore and no one really cared how he went about itBack when there was an appetite for such things Sir Dave Brailsford offered “20 lessons in leadership” for the website of a financial services consultancy called Harrington Starr. “The one biggest bit of advice” Brailsford had to give his readership was “to make people feel valued”. This, they learned, was “absolutely critical”, “a subject area of real importance and significance” because “performance hinges on people feeling genuinely valued in an organisation”. And it is easy to do, as Brailsford explained. “When you are under pressure a smile from a colleague asking ‘are you OK and what can I do to...
Having sold themselves as the ultimate in professionalism, Team Sky and British Cycling are now asking us to accept a remarkable litany of basic mistakes as the anti-doping investigation rolls onWill the clean victories of British cycling turn out to be another story that Britain liked to tell itself, in the manner of the “special relationship” or our supernaturally accomplished SAS? For some, it is still too early to say, though somewhat less early than it was a few months ago, before UK Anti-Doping began its increasingly revelatory investigation into Team Sky and its partner British Cycling.By now, there will perhaps be raised eyebrows in the many organisations before which the Team Sky head coach, Sir Dave Brailsford, spoke so...
British Cycling’s reboot was somewhat derailed by the latest revelations in Parliament but its 39-point plan should draw a line under the era between the Athens and Rio OlympicsThe press briefing on Thursday morning by the British Cycling chairman, Jonathan Browning, and the UK Sport chief executive, Liz Nicholl, at British Cycling’s headquarters in Manchester should have been all about the governing body’s 39-point plan to revamp its culture and management. This appeared to have been planned as a pre-emptive strike against revelations in the much delayed Phelps report into the culture within the Olympic team prompted by the scandal last spring involving allegations of sexism made by the sprinter Jess Varnish.The agenda was immediately transformed, however, by the dramatic...