Inside Team Sky Read Free

the doping issue and this
year he had assumed that the issue would have faded away.
    ‘Last year it seemed full on, and I had never been exposed to that level of aggression. I couldn’t get my head around how unjust it was, and this time last year I felt just rotten. I
felt terrible for Tim [Kerrison] who I had persuaded to come into this sport.’
    Dave Brailsford is not often wrong, but on this assumption he was. Nothing had faded away. His antagonism towards Paul Kimmage’s edgy but not particularly disrespectful question at the
pre-race press conference showed his chimp had made the journey to Corsica. It is remarkable a man so bright can so easily lose his ability to be rational and do what is best for the team.
    As the Tour unfolds there will be press conferences far more hostile than that opening salvo on the cruise ferry. And Brailsford knows he will have to do better.
    By now Brailsford is sitting on the low shelf that runs across the back of the camper van, SKY 18. He senses he’s made a bad start to his media performance at the Tour
and though he barely shows the disappointment, it is there.
    Rod Ellingworth, the team’s performance manager, comes to where we’re talking. Affable, enthusiastic, an outstanding planner. He has been for a walk and arrives with beads of sweat.
Most mornings Brailsford and Kerrison, and general facilitator Dario Cioni will rise around six and be out on their bikes before seven. A former bike rider, Ellingworth has previously said he
wouldn’t be comfortable disappearing at that time in the morning, preferring instead to hang about, breakfasting with the carers and mechanics, available to anyone with a problem he can help
solve.
    Empathy comes easily to him and underpins his role within the team. A lot of the staff find it easy to relate to him, and him to them, and as well as his people skills he is a master planner.
Quickly picking up on the fact that Brailsford isn’t his usual self, Ellingworth makes a little small talk and soon carries on to the hotel.
    Chris Haynes walks from the hotel, as quietly and as unobtrusively as he does most things in life. He is softy spoken, polite, gentle even, and you wonder how he was ever persuaded to head up
Team Sky’s media operation. His day job is in London with the ultra-successful Sky Sports television channels, where he is head of media and, though he consulted with and offered guidance to
Team Sky, it was never more than an adjunct to his primary role.
    Bradley Wiggins and a moment of breathtaking madness changed that. After the finish of the eighth stage of the 2012 Tour, Wiggins was asked in a press conference what he had to say to critics on
Twitter who publicly accused him of doping. Perhaps the journalist asking the question didn’t realise it, but this was one question guaranteed to evoke a vitriolic response from Wiggins.
    Two months before he’d won the Tour de Romandie but soon after, while recovering with his family, he’d gone on Twitter and was sickened by what he read. A lot of people, mostly under
the cover of their anonymous Twitter names, accused him of doping. For all the cool, Wiggins needs to be respected, even loved, and he couldn’t just dismiss those accusing him as people who
didn’t know what they were talking about.
    Instead he looked at himself as others were looking at him: dominant cyclist who wins time trials and occasional sprints, who stays with the best climbers in the mountains, yeah, he could see
why there were suspicions. He thought it would be better if he didn’t win his next race, the Dauphiné Libéré, as another victory would only make things worse. He worried
what winning the Tour de France would do to his reputation. He told his wife Cath that he didn’t want to win the Tour.
    Shane Sutton, the mate and Team GB coach who wasn’t afraid to stand up to him, told Wiggins to ignore the accusers. He said he wasn’t able to do that. Tim Kerrison told him to accept
that he