In the wake of the publication of the parliamentary committee’s report on doping in sport, the question on everyone’s lips seems to be whether Sir Dave Brailsford will survive the end of the day as boss of Team Sky or whether he’ll drag it out for the whole week.
One suspects that Brailsford is composing his own resignation speech this very moment. Chances are it’ll be one of those letters reminiscent of the recent slew of politicians’ statements that both deny culpability and fail to offer a real apology but instead refer to what’s best for the country/department/party/team/sport.
Read MoreThe BBC documentary broadcast on Sunday, Cycling’s Superheroes; The Price of Success is worth viewing as a reminder of the ruthlessness with which Dave Brailsford and Shane Sutton went about transforming British Cycling from minnows to a cycling superpower. It asks the question, “In their pursuit of glory, did they cross the line?”
Read MoreOlympic gold medalist Nicole Cooke held nothing back when she gave evidence to MPs on the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee on Tuesday. British Cycling, Team Sky and UKAD all came in for a roasting from the former winner of the 2006 Grande Boucle, the women’s Tour de France.
She described cycling as “a sport run by men for men” and that the attempts to combat doping were being conducted by “the wrong people, fighting the wrong war, in the wrong way, with the wrong tools.”
Read MoreAs Bradley Wiggins ‘hangs up his lycra’ as The Times put it today you would expect that it would be an opportunity to celebrate his outstanding lifetime achievements as the most decorated British Olympian, breaker of the Hour record and the first Briton to ever win the Tour de France. Sadly, for any British cycling fan, if we’re going to be absolutely honest with ourselves, any retrospective of his career has to be tainted by the TUE revelations that came out this year and the unconvincing stories and explanations behind ‘that package’ delivered to him at the 2011 Dauphiné.
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