With their cult of marginal gains and strong team ethic, Team Sky used to be quite good at team time trials. Not so on Wednesday’s opening stage of Tirreno-Adriatico where the men in black came home in lowly 18th position, some 1min 42secs down on winners BMC.
The reason? Three wheel failures including one dramatic incident which saw Gianni Moscon hit the deck at top speed after his front wheel appeared to explode. The headline writers – and c***s on Twitter, as Bradley Wiggins might put it – went to town: as Sky’s name was dragged further through the mud here was actual proof that the wheels had finally come of the beleaguered British team.
For the few of you who haven’t seen the high-speed crash – well, here it is in all its glory…
Moscon, the unfortunate rider whose tubular tyre appeared to separate from the wheel before the subsequent explosion of carbon, shrugged off his fall and completed the remaining few kilometres of the time trial. But it later emerged that the Italian was not the only Sky rider to suffer a wheel failure, with both Diego Rosa and Mikel Landa also having troubles and causing their team-mates to slow down.
With all eyes on Sky following their recent mauling at the hands of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport committee hearing into anti-doping, it was cruel timing to say the least.
Citing their (no-longer-intact) flawless record, Shimano – Sky’s wheel manufacturer – quickly promised a full investigation into the matter. For their part, Sky’s riders seemed to be 100% behind Shimano – although we’ve been here before, haven’t we? After all, this was the week when around 75% of Sky’s riders – excluding, intriguingly, Chris Froome – came out on Twitter to show their support (which invariably ranged from 100% to 110%) towards embattled boss Sir David Brailsford.
The clamour surrounding Brailsford and his role in Sky’s current pickle reached such feverous levels this week that the former performance director of British Cycling was forced to write an open letter to the MP Damian Collins, who is chairing the DCMS anti-doping committee.
In his latest effort to clear his name, Brailsford admitted that “mistakes were made by Team Sky” but hit out at some of the accusations doing the rounds, claiming that some of the criticism had been “unreasonable and incorrect”.
For those not up to speed: Brailsford is at the centre of a UKAD investigation surrounding the contents of a medical package used to treat Wiggins at the 2011 Dauphine. Sky have always maintained that the jiffy bag contained the legal decongestant fluimucil but there has been a suggestion in the media – most notably from David Walsh, the Irish journalist who was embedded with Team Sky and famously gave them a clean bill of health – that the contents could have instead been triamcinolone, the corticosteroid prescribed to Wiggins as a TUE on three occasions (and most notably ahead of his 2012 Tour triumph).
Brailsford and Sky “categorically” deny the “serious allegation” that the contents of the package was triamcinolone intended for an intra-muscular injection to Wiggins. In his letter, Brailsford stressed once again that there is “no evidence whatsoever” to the contrary.
Team Sky director Sir Dave BrailsfordAFP
It’s no surprise: should it be found that the package contained triamcinolone and not fluimucil then suddenly we’re talking about a doping offence punishable by a two-year ban. That means Britain’s first Tour winner will no longer be Wiggins.
While accepting that “mistakes were made” when it came to keeping records and the correct documentation, Brailsford took the letter as a chance to rally against the “incorrect assumptions and assertions” doing the rounds and to put the record straight on “a number of factual inaccuracies”.
Most notably here, Brailsford stressed that it was misleading of the media to suggest that fluimucil – at least, in the 3ml, 10% ampoule form used by Sky – could be bought over the counter in France. He also stressed that triamcinolone was only prohibited for use in competition and dismissed claims – made by Walsh – that Sky has ordered 70 ampoules in 2011 alone: “Our records indicate that 55 ampoules of triamcinolone were ordered over a 4-year period between 2010 and 2013.”
The reasons why Sky had maintained a silence for so long during the case was to refrain from making any public declarations until the investigation was concluded, the letter said. Brailsford had fully co-operated with UKAD’s investigation and “looks forward to its conclusion”.
The erection of this fresh line of defence came as the Daily Mail, sniffing blood, published an article banging on about Sky’s alleged experimentation with Viagra in a bid to stiffen their resolve. Probing deeper and taking a hardline, the paper claimed that Sky cyclists had been made to use the sex pill at altitude camps to establish whether it helped their riding performances.
Say what you like about the Mail’s coverage of the Sky scandal, but this story was really scraping the barrel. Indeed, it all went floppy a few lines in when the paper could only admit that “at least one rider” was prescribed the drug by their personal GP while a British Cycling staff member was prescribed the impotency drug for “personal use” by a team doctor.
There’s no point in reminding readers that cycling, of all sports, is perhaps one which least lends itself to having a massive bulge in one’s already wholly revealing shorts: aerodynamics aside, it just wouldn’t be very comfortable.
If the paper at least added that WADA once considered adding Viagra to its banned list in 2008 because of its blood-boosting flow, then that was of little import when the actual news developed during the week with reports emerging that WADA was now considering a blanket ban on triamcinolone and a over-hauling of an open-to-abuse system which allows athletes to use powerful corticosteroids freely out of competition and during competition with a TUE.
Because this is where the story is at: the fall-out from a system open to abuse. For until it can be proved that it was Kenacort in the package and not fluimucil then there’s no actual anti-doping case for Sky, Brailsford and Wiggins to answer beyond one of ethics. And the only person who can confirm what was in the package – besides Brailsford and Wiggins – is Dr. Richard Freeman, and he’s currently too ill to speak to the committee.
And so, it rumbles on. Having written his letter, Brailsford flew out to Italy to catch up with the team moments before the wheel debacle in Tirreno-Adriatico. If the incident would have seemed like a further slap in the face then a smile may have returned for Brailsford when he witnessed Thomas putting Team Sky back into the headlines for the right reasons.
The Welshman tried his luck in the hilly second stage in Tuscany, breaking clear in the last 5km to solo to victory in Pomerance by nine seconds over the chasing Tom Dumoulin and the Peter Sagan-led man pack. It was a bullish win of a rider who has high hopes of performing at this kind of level in Italy later in May – and the emotion on Thomas’ face said it all.
After his win, Thomas admitted Brailsford has thanked him for his show of support earlier in the week. He also tried to distance himself from what is “more an issue for the management and the medical team”.
But 24 hours earlier – before the wheels had come off Sky’s TTT and before Thomas had probably even considered going on the attack so early in the race – the Welshman had been more vocal about the situation, admitting he was “annoyed” that Wiggins (seen recently on the TV show The Jump, during which he earned the nickname ‘Lord Lucan’ from his fellow celebrity contestants for his aloofness) has not had to “take the flak” over the mystery package delivered for him in 2011.
“For sure, there’s still questions to be answered. But Freeman and Brad don’t seem to have the flak,” Thomas told Cycling Weekly. “Those are the people who, primarily, this whole thing involves. But they can swan around getting on with their lives while we have to answer questions we’ve got nothing to do with.”
And that’s perhaps why Froome has kept so silent over the past few weeks. While his team-mates were pledging their support to Brailsford on Twitter, the triple Tour winner was posting photos of giraffes and his son while on holiday in South Africa. On Thursday he even managed to congratulate Thomas on his win – and yet he has not once mentioned Brailsford or the UKAD investigation.
But why would he show support to a man who has ensured that during every press conference in July he’ll be answering questions not about his performances in the yellow jersey but about mystery packages delivered to an old team-mate – and rival, let us not forget – who no longer appears accountable.
Silence seems sensible for Froome, even if it means he may have to ride the Eneco Tour in August…
