The question of whether Jim Callaghan ever uttered the legendary quote “Crisis what crisis?” during the Winter of Discontent in 1978-79 is a vexed one, but what matters is less what Sunny Jim said than the sense of disconnect between what was perceived as happening and what is taking place on the ground. “I don’t think other people in the world would share the view [that] there is mounting chaos,” is what Callaghan is reported to have said, and that was pretty much how it felt during the 12 hours I spent at the Manchester velodrome on Thursday, for reasons not connected to journalism.
It was pretty much business as usual: the riders in the World Masters track championships – this writer included – did their fast-pedalling thing, elements of the Olympic team including a Rio gold medallist or two popped in for an afternoon’s training in the run-in to the European championships and members of the new under-23 academy intake wandered around looking a little like new kids at school.
The controversy around Bradley Wiggins’s therapeutic use exemptions seemed not exactly far away, but certainly not immediate. Wiggins had received injections of the corticosteroid triamcinolone to combat pollen allergies, taken just before major Tours in 2011, 2012 and 2013, but they were within the rules and British Cycling seemed largely untouched by the questions that had thrown up.
Late on Thursday night and into Friday, however, there was a change of pace when it was revealed that UK Anti‑Doping had begun an investigation into “allegations of wrongdoing in cycling”, and it was later confirmed that two members of Ukad staff attended a meeting with British Cycling on Friday.
Ukad was keen to clarify that “at no point have Ukad ‘raided’ British Cycling or Team Sky”. The meeting, Ukad stated, was with the full cooperation of British Cycling.
Wiggins stated early on Saturday through his official spokesman that “I welcome this investigation” although he was not planning on expanding on that. Team Sky followed that up with a statement on Saturday lunchtime that read: “Given some of the recent headlines we wanted to set out the facts. Team Sky were recently contacted by the Daily Mail regarding an allegation of wrongdoing which we strongly refute. We informed British Cycling and asked them to contact UK Anti-Doping. We understand that Ukad are currently investigating this as you would expect.”
The investigation was not directly related to Wiggins’s TUEs, but instead followed the revelation that a package containing “a medical substance” was delivered to Team Sky by a British Cycling coach, Simon Cope – who is now the director sportif of Wiggins’s eponymous professional team – at the Critérium du Dauphiné stage race in 2011 and that the recipient was the doctor responsible for Wiggins’s TUE applications in 2011, 2012 and 2013, Richard Freeman, who is the British Cycling team doctor. He will not travel to Qatar with the team for the world road race championships.
The Ukad investigation caps a period when immense success for British Cycling has been accompanied by massive turbulence, beginning with the allegations of sexism and discrimination against the technical director, Shane Sutton, which culminated in Sutton’s departure. An inquiry into the background to this chain of events is still ongoing, although it is expected to report before the British Cycling National Council meeting at the end of November. There is constant speculation about Sutton’s possible return to the fold.
The Sutton debacle was followed by the dramatic news that the world champion Lizzie Armitstead had come close to missing the Rio Olympic Games after registering three “strikes” on the ADAMS system that monitors a cyclist’s whereabouts for random testing. Armitstead was cleared a few weeks after her third “strike” when the court of arbitration for sport ruled that the first “strike” was not valid as doping control officers had not made proper attempts to contact her, but it made for an embarrassing run-in to the Olympic Games.
The pendulum swung the other way immediately with Armitstead almost forgotten by the time the British topped the cycling medal table in Rio with twice as many medals as their closest competitor, Holland. On the back of that, HSBC committed to backing the sport for eight years, replacing Sky as BC’s principal sponsor.
The mood at the velodrome, insiders say, is one of frustration with the latest run of destabilising events, given that British Cycling has grown spectacularly over the past 20 years, from the point when it was truly in crisis in the mid‑1990s to its current flagship status with a glut of medals and more than 125,000 members. Up and down the country, local cycling events are booming, even at the bottom end of the competitive spectrum.
Given that no one can predict where all this will end, it is hard to speculate about their long‑term impact.
Next week, Armitstead – now Lizzie Deignan after her marriage in September – and other GB team members will be at the world championships. There, on Wednesday, the venue for the 2019 world road titles will be announced, and there is a strong chance that they will be awarded to Yorkshire. In turn, that would be accompanied by a massive investment in racing infrastructure around the country, a game changer according to British Cycling.
The contrast between events back home and events far away will be acute given the obvious questions about the sport’s long-term ability to weather what might not be a crisis but something that resembles Callaghan’s mounting chaos.
