Jess Varnish has lost her employment tribunal appeal against British Cycling.
Mr Justice Choudhury backed the original ruling “that the claimant was not an employee or a worker”. Looking back on the original case in January 2019, he ruled: “The tribunal had not erred in its approach to the assessment of employee status and nor had it reached conclusions that no reasonable tribunal, properly directed, could have reached.
“It is our judgement that none of the grounds of appeal succeeds and the appeal is dismissed.”
Varnish had initially brought a landmark employment case against both UK Sport and British Cycling, arguing that she had been an employee on the high-performance programme before she was removed from it in the build-up to the Rio Olympics in 2016.
The original tribunal in Manchester ruled that the National Lottery funding that Varnish received at British Cycling via UK Sport meant she was neither an employee nor worker for either body.
Instead, it deemed the money she received was more akin to a university grant and was not, therefore, subject to the same employment rights.
Varnish, 29, had been given the right to appeal in December last year, with the decision made public today.
If the original tribunal had gone against UK Sport, athletes would have been potentially eligible for pensions and other employment rights.
