Inside Team Sky

by Walsh, David

  We watch a group of children ride little bikes round the indoor BMX track, kids of four and five learning to be comfortable on a bike. This new facility has been built off the success of the track teams that Brailsford nurtured and though he doesn’t claim any credit, he is due some.

  Team Sky was conceived in this velodrome amid unanimous agreement that they would replicate their approach to track cycling on the road. Sports scientists would work with the riders, everything that the team would do on and off the bike would be thought through and evidence based, and there would be no doping.

  He wants me to know where he’s come from. ‘I place a lot of trust and have a lot of confidence in Dr Steve Peters. We sat down and said, “Okay, well, our values and our beliefs, they are going to be unquestioned.” It was very clear we are very anti-doping and that’s how we’re always going to be. If we couldn’t do it that way, if it was impossible, then we’d stop. Winning is great but it’s not about winning, it’s the process that I like.

  ‘How do you help somebody to improve? That’s what we enjoy doing and we’re thinking about it all the time.’

  Depending upon your starting point this is either admirable or PR fluff, and I am inclined to seeing it as the latter. But I would remember Brailsford’s views on the process being more interesting than winning during the final stages of the 2013 Tour. Though Chris Froome had a healthy lead at that point there was still the 32km time trial from Embrun to Chorges and three tough Alpine stages to get through.

  Rain was forecast and with two longish descents on the course, the time trial couldn’t be regarded as a formality. Early that afternoon Brailsford retired to his room at the Hotel Les Bartavelles in Embrun to take an hour-long nap. More tired than he thought, he slept on and was woken by the France 2 commentary of the time trial, right at the point in the late afternoon when there was a spectacular crash.

  ‘I was woken by the commentator screaming “Chute, chute! ” Half awake, I thought it had to be Froomey. Then I saw it was the French rider Christophe Peraud who started the day ninth and was then out of the race.’

  We talked about how he could sleep through an important moment in the race; he thought nothing of it. It wasn’t his job to communicate with the team leader during the time trial. That was left to directeur sportif Nico Portal. If he had travelled in the car, he would have found it hard to stay quiet. In his management game, the conductor doesn’t whisper advice to the violinist during the recital.

  That afternoon in Manchester, Brailsford took me through his life. He left school at sixteen, determined to make something of his life but unsure about the direction. To get a qualification of some sort, he did an Ordinary National Certificate (ONC) and then Higher National Certificate (HNC) in engineering. He felt those certs freed him to do what he wanted, which was to ride the Tour de France.

  His dad worked every summer as an Alpine guide and when those engineering courses were done, he encouraged his son to come to France. Brailsford liked riding his bike and believed that with proper training, he might one day ride the Tour. He went to St Etienne, met people who saw him as you might see a stray dog and took him in. Long before the end of three years in France he realised he was never going to ride the Tour and would never be good enough to make his living from the sport.

  ‘I guess the most I got out of the time in France was the fact that I became fluent in French.’

  On his own, and with a lot of time, he used it to explore the worlds of physiology, sports science and training techniques. He wanted to find ways of making his training more efficient but he also discovered that no matter how intelligently and diligently he himself trained, it wasn’t going to be enough to allow him to compete as a professional.

  ‘I thought, “I’ve got to go back and work on my education.” I came back, went to university to study sports science and psychology which was funny because I had hated school. But I couldn’t wait to get back into education, loved every single minute of it, and went on to do an MBA because as well as the science of sport, I wanted to learn about the business side as well.’

  We talk about the principles that underpinned the setting up of Team Sky. ‘We had to be at the cutting edge of technology, and be up with the latest thinking in sports science, and ours was going to be a clean team. Our recruitment policy was simple: we would not hire any rider or staff who had tested positive or had any clear association with doping.

  ‘It seemed to me the recruitment of doctors was key. We agreed not to take any doctor from cycling, and would hire doctors from outside cycling and work from there.’

  I tell him that when it was revealed the team had employed Dr Geert Leinders from Rabobank, who was later shown to have been involved in doping, the question in my mind was, ‘How could Brailsford have done that?’

  ‘That’s been a very humbling experience for me.’

  Brailsford tells me the story of the June evening in 2004 when he and his pregnant partner Lisa were on a short break in Biarritz. He called David Millar who lived in Biarritz and was part of the Team GB track team. Unusually for him, Brailsford had allowed his professional relationship with Millar to also become personal. He and Millar were friends and that evening they decided to go to Millar’s favourite restaurant, the Blue Cargo.

  Intelligent and charming, Millar had just told an interesting anecdote about a long night partying with Lance Armstrong and two Aussies Matt White and Stuart O’Grady, when two men approached the table. ‘David Millar?’ The rider nodded, they flashed their police badges and asked him and Brailsford to come with them.

  Outside, a third police officer waited. Millar was taken in the police car with two of the policemen, the third travelled with Brailsford and his partner in Millar’s car. Heavily pregnant, Lisa didn’t understand what was happening and was crying. Told to follow the car in front, Brailsford presumed they were going to Millar’s apartment and knowing his way, he let the police car disappear. This infuriated the officer in the back seat of Brailsford’s car who thought he had deliberately allowed the car in front to get away. The officer began punching the back of Lisa’s seat which in turn infuriated Brailsford. He stopped the car. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  Not getting much by way of an apology, Brailsford drove on and Lisa was still deeply upset. After a stop at the Biarritz police station, they went to Millar’s apartment, put Millar in one corner, Brailsford in the other, ransacked the place and found two used EPO syringes.

  Brailsford was allowed take Lisa to a hotel before he reported back to the station for questioning. They grilled him for five hours, insisted he had to have known what Millar was doing and a female officer said, ‘Your wife is pregnant and she’s going to lose the baby because you’re a fucking liar.’ Brailsford said he didn’t know what was going on.

  A male officer showed him a little syringe, asked him what it was and when Brailsford said a syringe, it seemed only to make things worse.

  ‘Of course it’s a syringe, what kind of syringe is it?’

  ‘It’s a small syringe.’

  Exasperated, the officers pointed to a word on the side of the syringe, Eprex.

  ‘What’s Eprex?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You must.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  In the end they told him it was EPO and he had to have known what it was. Brailsford said the truth was that he didn’t and what did they want from him. The truth, they said. ‘That’s what I’m giving you,’ he replied. They convinced him they didn’t accept a word he was saying.

  Then, half an hour after the questions stopped, one of the officers returned to the interrogation room and politely told Brailsford they believed him. He couldn’t believe what they’d put him through. ‘You knew I had nothing to do with this,’ he said. ‘We weren’t sure,’ the officer replied.

  He tells this story passionately, wanting me to understand he had been with Millar at the moment of his disgrace and that he had been treated like a criminal simply be
cause he’d been in Millar’s company.

  Lisa wanted him to return home as soon as he could, advice reiterated by people back at British Cycling, but Brailsford stayed to support Millar who spent almost two days in prison before making a full confession in the 47th hour of a 48-hour detention.

  When he was released from prison, Brailsford was waiting for him. They shared a bottle of wine and Millar told his friend and the boss of Team GB, for which he rode, the full extent of his doping. Brailsford listened but didn’t judge, even though it emerged Millar had used drugs when riding for the GB team and by doing so jeopardised Brailsford’s position and the entire programme.

  After returning to Britain, Brailsford asked Steve Peters to go down to Biarritz and do what he could to help Millar through a difficult time. According to Millar, Brailsford paid for Peters’s flight from his own pocket.

  I listened without saying much.

  Brailsford wasn’t sure what I thought about Team Sky. Neither was I.

  ‘Do you believe we’re clean?’ he asked.

  ‘If you put a gun to my head and said, “Did Team Sky win the Tour de France clean?” I’d say, “Yes, I think they did win it clean.” Then the trigger is pulled, I hear the click of an empty chamber and I think, “Phew, thank God I’m still around,” because there would be a fair amount of relief. You see, I’m not sure. How can anybody be?’

  ‘I know we are doing things correctly,’ he said. ‘I know we are clean.’

  ‘If you are, why do you get so defensive when there are doping questions?’

  ‘We don’t get defensive,’ he said.

  ‘You do. Bradley’s explosion at the Tour created the impression the team wasn’t comfortable dealing with doping. Some journalists complained that the team was too controlling and occasionally tried to discourage journalists from asking about doping.’

  ‘I’m sure we didn’t do that,’ he says.

  ‘Certain journalists say you did, that they themselves were asked not to pursue a particular line at a Wiggins press conference for fear that it would upset the leader. And that was normally something to do with doping.’

  I felt he didn’t believe this had taken place, but it had.

  He then changed tack. ‘We have nothing to hide and if you’d like to come and live with the team, you’d be more than welcome.’

  ‘What do you mean, “live with the team”?’

  ‘You would have complete access. Stay in the team hotel, eat with us. Travel with members of the team, speak to who you want to, go into the doctor’s room, see who’s coming in and out of the hotel. Literally, whatever you want to do.’

  I hadn’t expected anything like this and it put me in a slightly awkward position.

  ‘You tried this before with my close friend Paul Kimmage and it didn’t work.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I was hugely embarrassed by what happened. I invited Paul to come with us on the 2010 Tour de France and then I had to withdraw the offer after the first few days. I found myself in an extremely difficult position, but a few of the staff didn’t enjoy having Paul around. They found him intense and difficult to be around. We could have handled it better. He could have handled it better.’

  ‘What do you think is the key to it working this time round?’ I say.

  ‘Paul came to a training camp for two or three days before the Tour; it wasn’t enough. People didn’t know him, weren’t comfortable around him and I think he’d agree himself, he’s not the easiest guy. If you’re going to do this, you’ve got to come to our training camp at Mallorca in January. Spend a week with us there. Then you’ve got to spend a week with us in Tenerife, because it is regarded as the place teams supposedly go for doping. Come with us and see what we do there. Then come on the Giro and by the time the Tour comes round, you will know everyone and people will hopefully be comfortable with your presence. And don’t wait for us to ask you, you join up with us whenever you want.’

  Leaving Manchester that evening, I knew the offer had to be accepted. How could you be a journalist and not want to travel inside the world number one cycling team?

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘He has drawn back, only in order to have enough room for his leap.’

  Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

  If you are a Corsican separatist or if you just like a quiet life you had best swallow hard. The Tour de France is coming! The Tour de France is coming! Twelve hundred hotel rooms have already been annexed by teams and organisers. Half the population of the world are sleeping either in camper vans or on boats.

  The Tour is celebrating its one hundredth edition by staying at home. The French have reclaimed their race – at least in the geographical sense. For the first time in a decade the peloton won’t be straying outside French territory. It will be sunflowers, chateaux and blue skies all the way.

  So you are Corsican and proud. Instead of swooning and falling in line you make an enormous banner, CORSICA IS NOT FRANCE, to welcome the visitors and you drape it across a bridge overlooking the route. A message to all who wonder about Corsicans’ view of the motherland. But business is business, tourists are euros and you are out of step.

  This is the moment to offer the world thousands of moving postcards from Corsica. That is what this deal is about: a three-week advertisement in which bike riders fill up the moments between the landscape portraits. This is the first Tour of the post-Lance era. It will be cleaner and at the beginning, here in Corsica, it will certainly be pretty.

  So step up, Corsica. To make up for never having bothered to come here at any time in the last ninety-nine editions, Corsica is getting Le Grand Départ and two other stages. The island is rugged and beautiful but the roads are narrower, and when riders talk about the first three stages, the word carnage gets used a lot.

  Team Sky arrive, like most other teams, on Wednesday. This is the start of a month living in each other’s ears, dealing with each other under extreme pressure, a month of everybody being pushed to their professional limits.

  It’s life in the trenches, but Team Sky at least look like the best turned-out and best equipped army in the war. The bus is fit for the Dark Lord of Mordor, the uniforms and bikes uniquely in this era not festooned with the logos of dozens of companies. Restraint and good design pervade. The blue stripe, representing the thin line between success and failure, runs down everything from the back of the chef’s whites to the team-issue iPhones.

  The team are addicted to detail: pineapple juice to make water more drinkable; chemical weapons [alcohol disinfectant] deployed against germs; every bike checked and passed by two mechanics, working indoors to soft music in an airconditioned truck which keeps the space at precisely 23 degrees. If it snows, rains or freezes, their colleagues on other teams are out in the elements fixing bikes, cursing the weather.

  In the evening riders eat on their own, their dinner timed to start thirty or forty-five minutes before staff, so that the main men get a little privacy and the sense that though their days are hard, staff days are longer. Riders will eat food specially bought and prepared by their own chef, Søren Kristiansen. If any of this nutritious food is left over, provided the riders have left the dining room, Søren will invite the staff to help themselves. Otherwise it is hotel food.

  Over dinner the second directeur sportif, Servais Knaven, will hand out the following day’s plan. Sky’s daily plan is produced by the performance manager Rod Ellingworth and is a work of art. It lists who will travel with whom from the hotel to the start, then who travels with whom from the start to the finish and, finally, how everyone gets from the finish to the hotel.

  It can happen that a staffer will travel in three different vehicles for those three journeys and everything is underpinned by the need to make sure nothing encroaches upon the team performance. What never happens is someone stands around the team bus and vehicles at the end of a stage and asks who he is travelling with. Should that happen Ellingworth will say, ‘Oh, did you not get the plan?’ which might
sound like a question but isn’t.

  The teams are presented to the public at a ceremony by the sea in Porto-Vecchio on Thursday. As the previous year’s Tour de France winners, Team Sky are presented last. The team arrives like nine James Bonds atop a large white cruiser which cuts across the port. Some of the riders take photos of the scene ahead with their distinctive iPhones. Chris Froome stands to the side looking out to sea like Columbus who was born here, his Tintin profile peering towards either his destiny or a good spot for the spear fishing he enjoys so much. When the boat hits Porto-Vecchio a ramp descends and the nine Team Sky riders roll down onto the dockside on their Pinarellos. When you were a gangly spotty teenager there was always a tall, smooth, blue-eyed and Brylcreemed boy who turned heads everywhere he went. Team Sky are that boy. Most of you hated him. He knew that but he didn’t mind. You’re only human.

  This is my first time at the race since disillusionment caused me to hand in my little green accreditation badge in 2004.

  ‘Au revoir, messieurs, la victoire pour les tricheurs [Goodbye, men, the victory for the cheaters],’ I thought at the time. Through the years from Armstrong’s seventh in 2005 – featuring Landis, Rasmussen, Vinokorouv, Contador, et al – to Wiggins in 2012, I hadn’t covered the Tour, and I hadn’t missed it. Armstrong’s banishment changed things; exiting the building, he left the door half-open and finally I had a way back in.

  ‘It’s your comeback Tour, how do you feel?’ says a photographer colleague bumping into me in a corridor.

  ‘Excited and holding on to scepticism,’ I say.

  I’m not just entitled to my scepticism, it is my job to have it with me at all times. We’ve all been fooled, duped and suckered by this race. ‘For years they fucked us,’ Jean Michel Rouet, a colleague at L’Equipe once said. I never forgot that. Lamentably there are ties cycling is unwilling to cut. On page 46 of the Tour de France bible, the official road book, there is a full-page photograph of Richard Virenque advertising a Festina watch. In the photo Virenque looks handsome, almost distinguished. If you didn’t know his story or understand what he had stood for, you could look in the road book and see cycling’s George Clooney, the same tinges of grey.