In 2008 I began researching an account of the rise and rise of the British Olympic cycling team, which has been in the spotlight as never before with the resignation of the technical director, Shane Sutton, after allegations of sexism, bullying and discriminatory remarks about members of the paralympic squad, which he strenuously denies. The foundations of the Medal Factory have been rocked profoundly, and an inquiry into behaviours within the squad has been launched to report back in September.
The project, provisionally entitled Golden Dawn, was abandoned for reasons that now make some sense. The principal issue was that the Medal Factory story was not a straightforward tale of sporting rags to riches. It would be virtually impossible to simplify the narrative sufficiently to create a coherent book. The actual racing – the medals, the near-misses, the rise of stars such as Sir Chris Hoy, Rebecca Romero, Sir Bradley Wiggins and Victoria Pendleton – was easy to follow. The complexity lay in the level of interpersonal conflict and grievance within the organisation.
This was inevitable when you consider the strength of the personalities involved and the intense way they all work. The Manchester Velodrome – compared by one rider recently to a hospital for its clinical environment – was a pressure cooker filled with free electrons colliding with each other in an infinite variety of ways. Every conflict was two-sided, at least, and the multiplicity of conflicted interactions would be impossible to convey without taking sides or appearing to do so.
The notes for that book, mainly from off-the-record conversations, recall a variety of tense situations: selection crises, the jockeying for hierarchical position, day-to-day annoyances and frustrations. Sir Dave Brailsford believed his organisation thrived on tension because it meant there were few comfort zones. But the tension needed outlets, it needed mitigation and the team’s psychiatrist at the time, Dr Steve Peters, played a key role.
Like mountain peaks coming out of a veil of cloud when viewed from an aeroplane, elements of some of the various conflicts have since broken cover, particularly when key participants such as Pendleton, Nicole Cooke, Hoy and Wiggins wrote their personal accounts. But there was an awful lot more going on underneath.
The events of the past week make some sense when seen in this context. The pressure cooker has burst and the free electrons are flying everywhere.
The tensions did not centre solely on Sutton by any means, although the abrasive Australian was key. This was inevitable given the strength of his personality, his apparent disregard for political correctness or – in certain situations – basic diplomacy. As one insider told me this week, Sutton has fallen out with pretty much everyone in the organisation at one time or another, but he was still the first person most people would call if they needed something, anything.
Brian Cookson, the president of UCI, cycling’s world governing body, added to the heat on Saturday when he said he was surprised Brailsford had not commented on the past week’s scandal. Cookson told the Telegraph: “I think it’s not for me to say what Dave should or shouldn’t do. He was the performance director for many years and was very successful. All I will say is that I am surprised not to have seen any comment from Dave.”
Meanwhile, Cookson called the situation with Rio’s Olympic velodrome “very, very serious”. A delayed test event has been cancelled because the track was not ready. “It’s very disappointing,” he said. “I understand the track itself is more or less complete, it’s rideable, but the building still has quite a bit of work to do on it.”
Another theme to emerge was that the growth of the British Cycling organisation and its increasing success after Beijing were not doing anything to make it a softer environment. The stars became more successful, the financial stakes grew higher for them and the coaches’ prestige grew greater. After 2008, the inception of Team Sky – and the millions in sponsorship for the federation from Rupert Murdoch’s company – merely blurred the picture further and increased the pressure, while after Beijing Brailsford became increasingly focused on his brainchild, Team Sky.
The inquiry launched week needs to revisit the Deloitte report from 2010‑11 on the relationship between British Cycling and Team Sky and ask whether the report’s recommendations were met. It will also need to examine the Peter King report from 2012, where the former chief executive took anonymous statements from 40 personnel, several of whom have told me that they thought this was a way to make known their views on the various conflicts and on Sutton’s behaviour, in the hope that they would be acted upon.
Another area to consider would be the alleged institutionalised sexism, with the women’s road-race squad starved of resources compared with the men’s. For a squad founded on the medal-or-nothing principle to function, the disparity looked bizarre and it would be legitimate for the inquiry to question whether that apparently institutionalised sexism was reflected in individual behaviour.
One telling comment in the notes from that never-written book was from a rider who told me the British Cycling Olympic programme was “built on sand”. At the time, it seemed an astonishing claim to make about a system that was producing medal after medal and had a constant string of talent coming through the ranks. But it now makes sense – the scale of tension and conflict bubbling under the surface meant that once the team system began to implode, as it so clearly has done, the process might rapidly run away from those trying to repair the pressure cooker.
Worryingly, this could be far from the end of the GB Olympic team’s travails, with the Games three months away and with that inquiry in the pipeline. It might be just the beginning.
