The extent to which British Cycling failed to deal with allegations of bullying when they surfaced more than four years ago – as well as what UK Sport knew about the problems in the velodrome – is revealed by correspondence between the two bodies obtained by a Freedom of Information request by ITV.
An email from the former British Cycling chief executive Ian Drake to UK Sport, sent to the chief executive officer Liz Nicholl in December 2012, makes no mention of bullying in his summary of an internal review conducted by Peter King, despite it being one of its key findings. Instead Drake talks about King identifying “weaknesses in the senior management and middle management structure” , which is suspected to be a reference to the tensions between the then performance director Dave Brailsford, his assistant Shane Sutton and team psychiatrist Steve Peters – as well as other issues.
However, a briefing note from November 2012 shows that Drake did discuss the King report with Helen Nicholls, a UK Sport performance adviser, and mentioned eight weaknesses in British Cycling that needed to be addressed. While these mostly related to the management problems and “succession planning”, the sixth point refers to “Behaviours , teams/individuals need addressing at times”.
British Cycling insiders insist that Drake went through the full details of the King report with Nicholls in a meeting that lasted two hours but this is strongly denied by UK Sport, who say that neither Nicholls nor other senior staff were ever told about bullying allegations.
A UK Sport spokesperson said: “At the time of the report it was felt that British Cycling had matters in hand and were dealing with them appropriately. It was suggested that the planned structural changes in Ian’s email to Liz were going to address this. It was only subsequently that the full extent of underlying issues became clear. Ian didn’t mention any issues relating to rider claims of bullying at the time.”
In a statement British Cycling said the appointment of a new chief executive, Julie Harrington, and new performance director, Stephen Park, showed their commitment to reforms. A spokesperson said: “British Cycling has acknowledged and takes very seriously previous cultural and governance failings in the World Class Programme. To that end, significant restructuring of the organisation has already taken place alongside the completion of the independent review.”
UK Sport has said it will publish the full King review when it publishes the long-awaited Cycling Independent Review into the culture in British Cycling, which was originally due to be released last November.
