by Walsh, David
Some PR person had messed up. Unspecified? That was a bit cryptic. Why unspecified? Unspecified to whom? By whom? He wasn’t a footballer who had played badly in a training five-a-side or strained his groin the day before the game. He wasn’t Lord Lucan, he hadn’t just vanished. After a few hours there would be a corrective update, some hidden hand trying to erase suspicion. Tiernan-Locke had pulled out because he wasn’t riding well enough to help Chris Froome win the rainbow jersey of world champion. The rider posted a tweet.
‘Was sorry I had to withdraw from the worlds line up, just don’t have the form to help the lads there. Good luck to team GB though.’
Hmmm. Too late. The alarm had sounded. You can’t unring that bell.
This new version was just about plausible because Tiernan-Locke had endured a terrible first season with Team Sky. Within the team his name was rarely mentioned. Like the aunt hidden away in the attic, no one let on he was part of the family. But why hadn’t this poor form been mentioned in the first instance? He didn’t lose his form after learning of his selection. He never had it. Why did Tiernan-Locke wait until so late in the day to decide that this poor form, which had coloured his entire season, meant he wouldn’t be able to do himself justice in Tuscany? Unspecified. That was the word of the day. The petard upon which the PR exercise was hoisted.
That Thursday evening I was in London speaking with a group of cycling fans, mostly corporate guys working in the City. Three of them in turn asked about Tiernan-Locke and the unspecified reason for his withdrawal from Team GB. They thought something was up. As the Inspector Clouseau of cycling, I felt I should have had an answer for them. I didn’t, but at least mine wasn’t the only suspicious mind. The more I thought about it, the more I sensed that this smelt more fishy than an anchovy’s armpit.
Next day I rang Dave Brailsford. He was in Tuscany. He didn’t pick up. Slight relief for me, as this was going to be a tough call. I left a message saying there was something I needed to check. I knew things would have been fraught in Italy with the Cookson/McQuaid shootout cum election going down the following day and the ongoing Froome/Wiggins peace process still at a delicate stage, but it was still unusual for Brailsford not to return the call.
Time spent on the Armstrong case had led to relationships with people committed to anti-doping. People with the inside track. Drugs wonks. Deep Throats. They continue to be helpful. Calls are picked up. Questions are answered.
Curiouser and curiouser, as we often say while exploring the shady wonderland of doping. I called people in other teams, sources close to the dark heart of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) and people involved in the anti-doping movement. There was a story behind Tiernan-Locke’s withdrawal.
According to one source, the rider had been sent a letter by the UCI asking him to explain an irregularity in his biological passport. Another source simply knew that a Team Sky rider had some kind of issue related to a discrepancy in his biological passport. Some anti-doping people feared the case was being used as a political tool in the UCI presidential election.3
Here’s what I put together.
Earlier that week a letter had been sent from the UCI’s headquarters in Aigle, Switzerland, to Tiernan-Locke. Because he had ridden in a lower-tier continental team, Endura, he had not been part of the biological passport system for most of 2012. This changed after he won the Tour of Britain in September, when it was public knowledge he would ride with Team Sky in 2013.
He was tested in Manchester towards the end of the year. Systematic blood testing started from 1 January 2013, when he officially joined Team Sky and became a WorldTour rider. These tests would establish his baseline values and allow him to be part of the bio-passport system. Towards the end of 2013, a panel of three experts came to the conclusion there was a discrepancy in Tiernan-Locke’s values. Hence the letter.
Such a letter reflects serious concern and can be sent only when all three members of the panel, each assessing the blood values independently of the other two, agree the results are suspicious. If one analyst disagrees then there’s no letter. It may be that the panel decide to ‘target test’ the rider whose blood values give rise for concern but are not sufficiently irregular for the panel to need an explanation.
Ironically, the outlier blood value for which an explanation was needed came from a test undergone in late 2012. That is, when it was known that Tiernan-Locke would be joining Team Sky but had not yet done so. Only by establishing baseline values for Tiernan-Locke through 2013 were the UCI panel able to deem the 2012 result suspicious. Furthermore, his race results during 2013 were not those of a rider benefiting from performance-enhancing drugs. If he had doped he was entitled to a refund.
In one important respect, I was in a difficult position. The letter to Tiernan-Locke was the first step in a drawn-out process. After receiving it, he had three weeks to provide an explanation for the discrepancy. His explanation would then be considered by the three-man panel who had sent the original letter. They could accept his explanation and that would be it. No further action necessary. Or they could choose not to accept it and then the case would go before a panel of eleven experts who would decide whether or not the rider deserved to be sanctioned.
There have been many cases of riders asked to explain a discrepancy similar to Tiernan-Locke’s and, because the explanation was accepted, the case never became public. According to the UCI’s protocols, the initial letter is a private matter between the governing body and the rider, and only in the event of the three-man panel not accepting the rider’s explanation will he be charged and a case initiated against him. Then it will become public.
But the UCI’s protocols were their business, not my concern. Their policy back in the dark days, to warn riders about suspicious tests or blood values, as they did most notoriously in the cases of Lance Armstrong and Tyler Hamilton, was one I despised. What did it achieve, other than to alert cheats they were sailing close to the wind? ‘Thanks, guys,’ and off the dopers went to plot a new course.
So much for the UCI and protocol.
My concern was journalism.
For sure, there was the question of fairness to Tiernan-Locke and I understood the argument that his reputation could be damaged by a story which in the end might not result in an investigation. The fight for a clean sport, though, is a fight for transparency. For me this was a story that should be told and it wasn’t just about Jonathan Tiernan-Locke. If and when he got the all clear, the story would become a footnote and a testament to a more enlightened system.
As important as it is was to discover whether the UCI believed he’d competed clean in 2012, the case also had ramifications for Team Sky. Simply put, did the team have the wherewithal to run a clean programme? After Geert Leinders, how had Sky got itself into this position? For many of us in the cheap seats, Leinders hovered behind Team Sky like Banquo’s ghost. For the principals, however, it often seemed like they were too busy to notice.
In his meeting with staff members on the night before the Tour began in Corsica, Dave Brailsford spoke briefly about how the team should deal with the media. The important thing was for everyone to sing from the same hymn sheet and this would be best achieved by the boss himself handling most of the enquiries. What often happens, he said, is that the journalists not getting change out of him go to Tim [Kerrison] or Rod [Ellingworth] in search of satisfaction. So, to avoid unpleasantness, Brailsford thought it better that he did most of the talking.
Of course, at the end of a race, journalists would naturally go to the directeur sportif about how things had unfolded on the road and that was fine. The DS was best placed to answer those questions. Brailsford asked his men to be polite in their dealings with the media and said he wanted the team to be open and transparent. But then the proviso: he wanted the team to stay in control.
Perhaps no one else on the team bus that evening paid much attention to that little piece of advice, but it sent a small shiver down my spine. What was I doing on this side of the
fence, listening to these Clintonesque definitions of openness and transparency? Had I become part of the Team Sky’s world of controlled controllables? There was no shortage of advice on this question from those on social media. All I had to do was tap the Twitter icon on my iPhone and feel the warmth of human kindness.
July 10: @SlapshotJC wrote – What was the price for David Walsh to sell out. How can the most insistent and vocal Journo of the last 20 years not see what’s going on?
July 10: @smnb – that’s because David Walsh got what he always wanted, an invite to the inner circle.
July 14: @mikkber – @DavidWalshST Do you still believe this fairytale? Or maybe Murdoch tells you to.
July 15: @phanley55 – David you’ve become Sky’s bitch. Seriously thought you had more sense.
July 15: @Digger_Forum – In order for Walsh to have any doubts, Froome would need to wheelie up Alpe d’Huez while signing breasts and on his mobile.
July 23: @eamonolenin – So D Walsh of the Sunday Times (prop. R Murdoch) investigated Team Sky (prop. R Murdoch) and gave them the OK? #laughter.
August 14: @Mackannovic – @DavidWalshST is @SkySportsWTS tv slot your reward for doing the PR job for Team Sky over the past months #companyman.
Before accepting the invitation to live and look within Team Sky, I imagined there would be this reaction from some quarters (above is just a brief sample of the thoughts of my correspondents) but I never really saw the difficulty. If the organisation I work for thought that I was that easily purchased and influenced, I would never have been employed by them in the first place. If I sensed that such was their view I would have resigned and gone elsewhere long ago. We are adults and professionals, though. If – after a lifetime of fighting for transparency and honesty in cycling – the top team in the sport was inviting me to come in and look wherever I wanted to look, I would be failing as a journalist not to pick up my magnifying glass and deerstalker and join them.
The most frightening thing, ironically, was the prospect of not finding anything. To take the abuse and the insults to my integrity and then give Team Sky a broadly clean bill of health was going to be grist to the mill of the online detractors. That’s how it panned out however, and I had finished the coverage of the Tour de France with a long piece in the Sunday Times expressing my view that Chris Froome was a winner in whom we could believe. For some, this expression of belief in Froome was treachery.
Now on the Saturday, the day before the World Championship Road Race, I called Dave Brailsford who was still in Tuscany. Again he didn’t pick up. This time the message conveyed a lot more urgency. Deadlines have a habit of curing awkwardness or embarrassment.
‘Dave, I need to speak to you about something really important. I’m writing a story for tomorrow’s Sunday Times and it’s vital I get a reaction from you.’
Not long after that he called me back. I told him what I knew. He was calm but unhappy that I’d found out. I had the sense that how I had found out might be a significant issue within Team Sky. ‘How did you come to hear this? As far as I know, this process is supposed to be totally confidential at this point.’ Such is the way of damage limitation exercises, they begin with witch hunts.
Brailsford was shocked that the Tiernan-Locke letter was quite common knowledge among those with a passing awareness of the UCI’s political corridors.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘officially Jonathan Tiernan-Locke withdrew himself. And obviously we brought Luke [Rowe] in, and carried on, so I can’t really comment any further than that. So I think probably the best port of call would be Andrew McQuaid [Tiernan-Locke’s agent].’
I asked him if he knew the reason for the rider’s withdrawal.
‘Well, I can’t comment at the minute. Let’s put it that way.’
‘Why can’t you comment?’
‘Well, the process here is that an individual would be informed there was a reason for suspicion, and they would be informed personally and it wouldn’t be public. At that point, an individual has the right to explain themselves in confidence. And the way the system works, if the explanation is accepted, it’s “Okay, fair enough, we accept that reasoning, thanks very much, carry on.” And there is no issue. On the other hand if the explanation is not accepted and there is a case to answer, then the other stakeholders and the press would be informed.
‘Our society is based on the presumption of innocence, and beyond that I don’t want to comment.’
I put it to Brailsford that if the information I’d received about the letter to Tiernan-Locke was false he would tell me. He agreed he would, leaving it at that. It was true: the letter had been sent.
This was Saturday. The story would stand up. On Sunday things only got worse for Team Sky however.
In foul conditions, the team riders performed dismally in the World Road Race. Josh Edmondson and Steve Cummings crashed on roads slickened by relentless rain. They at least had some excuse. After giving the impression that he would welcome an offer of marriage from Chris Froome at the midweek press conference, Bradley Wiggins left Froome standing at the altar in the rain. Wiggins struggled at the back of the pack for some time before abandoning soon after the halfway mark. He headed for the team bus like a bride going home to mother. His only bit of luck was that he wasn’t injured in the stampede.
The rest of the team surrendered one after another and the bus filled quickly with sodden cyclists. The early efforts had taken a toll, and so too had the conditions. Froome gave up the fight with 100km of the 270km race still remaining. ‘I think the only two guys who actually did anything on the GB side were Cav and Luke Rowe,’ he said. ‘I’d say they were the only ones who pulled their weight, myself included.’
Team GB manager Rod Ellingworth was brutally frank. The willingness of his troops to dismount and take shelter from the storm troubled him.
‘We should be very disappointed. The lads’ attitude wasn’t where it needs to be, to be honest. I’m not sure they really took this on thinking it was going to be as hard as it actually was. Chris said he struggled with the cold and the rain, but it is the same for everybody. That’s what makes the Worlds what it is.
‘All of them sat on the bus with a hundred kilometres to go is very disappointing. Luke [Rowe] and Cav [Mark Cavendish] were average, the other guys were well below average. I’m sure Brad will be disappointed with his performance. It is not as if he didn’t have the form. He had the same problem as he had in the Giro: he couldn’t get down the hill, went out the back and was gone.’
After the bikes were washed down, the cars loaded up and everyone in Team GB went their separate ways, there was still the problem of what to do about Jonathan.
Born in Devon, Tiernan-Locke was first noticed riding mountain bikes. He achieved some success and became part of a new generation of riders reaching the professional level via this new form of the sport. At eighteen he switched to the road and like so many aspiring professionals, he took himself off to France, and rode for the amateur team UV Aube. His results were enough to earn him a place on the British U23 team at the World Championships.
After UV Aube, he rode for another French team, CC Etupes, and achieved decent results. This was 2005 but after making a strong start at CC Etupes in eastern France, Tiernan-Locke’s career was derailed by illness. He fell victim to what seemed a nasty strain of Epstein-Barr virus, a condition whose mildly exotic name hides the fact that most adults suffer from it at some point or other.
‘One day I started coming down with a cold,’ Tiernan-Locke told Cyclingnews. ‘That turned into flu and then it became the worst strain of flu I’d ever had. It just got worse. Then my immune system broke down. I had a skin disease. I was literally falling apart.’
The team wanted him to continue racing but he was in no condition to do so and after a month of misery he returned to England. ‘I turned my back on the sport. I went to university [Bristol] and thought about another career. I put on two stone, drank, partied and didn’t touch my bike. Keeping active for me w
as walking home from the pub pissed.’
For three years he rode his luck in college and surfed on sofas and lived the life but cycling crooked its finger to him eventually. He got a job in Colin Lewis Cycles shop in Paignton, Devon and in the July of 2007, he stood with colleagues and customers and watched the Tour de France unfold on television. Tiernan-Locke saw himself as a climber and he watched in wonder as riders he’d once competed against rode the Tour’s great mountain stages. He wanted to get back. He’d train over the winter and be back in shape for the start of the new season.
He was as good as his word.
In March 2008 the Bristol Evening Post carried an unobtrusive report on cycling. It was noted among other things that Bristol University student Jonathan Tiernan-Locke, riding for the Plowman Craven team, had won the second springtime pursuit race of the season. That encouraged him, but the gods were just toying with him. Soon after, Plowman Craven went bust. To continue his comeback, he switched to the Sport Beans Wilier team and finished a creditable ninth in the Abstraction Lincoln Grand Prix. Then there was an accident with a horse that set him back. You get the drift.
But on the deck of this sinking vessel stood John Herety, a former European pro. He was directeur sportif at the Rapha Condor team and he remembered Tiernan-Locke back when the young rider from Devon had made the British U23 team. He offered him a place in the Rapha team for 2011 and at the age of 25, the rider at last had the opportunity to show he could compete against pros. Rapha was a relatively small team but well enough organised and they could get into some of the better races.
At the end of season, Tiernan-Locke won the mountains jersey and finished fifth overall in the Tour of Britain. That won him a place on the stronger Endura team who would campaign in Europe and offered him a bigger stage. It didn’t take long for Tiernan-Locke to show he could compete successfully at a higher level. On the second weekend of February 2012, Tiernan-Locke won two stages and overall victory in the Tour Méditerranéen. A week later he won the second stage and overall victory at the Tour du Haut Var, a race he had won as an amateur seven years before.