Sky falls out of cycling

London, December 12

When Team Sky launched in London in 2010 with the ambition of having a British winner of the Tour de France within five years, it was accompanied by scepticism.

British Cycling’s Dave Brailsford was installed as team principal, bringing with him the “marginal gains” strategy that would underpin successes and controversies over almost a decade of extraordinary success.

Six out of seven Tour de France titles, three of which were won by different riders, and Chris Froome holding all three major tour titles at once would be impressive enough in isolation but, coming after more than 100 years of Britain failing to get a man on the Tour podium, the success and the speed with which it was achieved were nothing short of astonishing.

The broadcaster has now announced it will end its association with the team next year. Reports said the investment was worth £30 million over four years but by 2017 their budget for that year alone was £31.1 million.

Such figures dwarfed anything the rest of the peloton could muster and soon led to a seething undercurrent of animosity. Bradley Wiggins finished 24th in Team Sky’s tentative debut at the Tour de France in 2010 and two years later became the first British winner of cycling’s most prestigious event.

With Wiggins also leading British domination of the cycling programme at the 2012 London Olympics, Brailsford was the toast of the sporting world.

At a time when trust in cycling was at an all-time low on the back of Lance Armstrong and relentless doping revelations, Sky seemed a shining beacon.

But soon the halo began to slip. The team struggled to explain the delivery of a mystery “jiffy bag” for Wiggins at the 2011 Criterium du Dauphine race in France and Brailsford’s belated claim that it was a ‘flu treatment that needed to come from England did not convince many onlookers. A 14-month UK Anti-Doping investigation into its contents eventually hit a dead end due to a lack of accurate medical records being available.

In March this year, a damning report by the British government’s Digital Culture Media and Sport select committee said that the team had cynically abused the anti-doping system by using therapeutic-use exemption certificates.

PR damage

Froome won the Tour in 2013 and would go on to win another three but he too came under the microscope for an adverse analytical finding for asthma drug salbutamol. He was later cleared of any wrongdoing by the governing UCI, but the PR damage had been done. — Reuters