Jess Varnish insists she has no regrets despite losing her employment tribunal against British Cycling and UK Sport, and claims to have provoked “significant change”.
The track cyclist was seeking to sue for wrongful termination and sexual discrimination after she was dropped from the squad ahead of the 2016 Olympic Games. Varnish argued that she was in effect an employee of British Cycling and UK Sport, and was therefore entitled to statutory workers’ rights, but a judge dismissed her claim.
However the 28-year-old believes she has exposed some of the issues within the British sport system. “When I first spoke out, these organisations said I was wrong and there wasn’t a problem,” she said. “I’m happy that I and other athletes could show them otherwise and enable them to change their structure, their policies and their personnel. To change so significantly in the past three years can only be proof that a problem originally existed.”
“It took two leading barristers, a team of eight lawyers, a seven-day tribunal, close to £1m in legal fees and a proclamation that the ‘skies would fall in’ if the system was changed for British Cycling and UK Sport, to answer some simple questions posed by one athlete about the set-up of the world class performance system,” she said.
“The defence and tactics used against me at times were aggressive, my character was repeatedly called into question, my motives challenged. This wasn’t a defence that upheld the Olympic ideals rather one that embraced the win-at-all-costs mentality for which they’d recently been criticised. The irony for me is, right at the beginning of this process, when I met with British Cycling, all I asked for was an apology and commitment to improve athlete welfare. Neither were given.”
On Thursday Judge Ross ruled that Varnish “was not performing work provided by [British Cycling] – rather she was personally performing a commitment to train in accordance with the individual rider agreement”.
