Inside Team Sky (36 page)

For example, it became clear from the Tiernan-Locke case that one of the dangers inherent in taking a rider from a Pro Continental team is that there is no available bio-passport data. Given
this, wouldn’t it be sensible for the team to have a policy of doing their own tests on riders who come to them from a Pro Continental team? Saying it knew Garmin tested Tiernan-Locke and
being reassured by its rival being satisfied with the results was to apply a standard that Sky would not tolerate in any other area of its existence.

In the aftermath of the Tiernan-Locke story running in the
Sunday Times
, Sky issued a statement that sought to distance the team from the issue its rider had to address. ‘Team Sky
has been informed by Jonathan Tiernan-Locke that the UCI has notified him of a potential discrepancy in his biological passport data. He has withdrawn from racing whilst his response to the UCI is
prepared then considered by the UCI. We have no doubts over his performance, behaviour or tests at Team Sky and understand any anomaly is in readings taken before he joined the team.

‘Team Sky has tried to respect what should be a confidential process, allowing the rider to explain in private, without prejudice, and the anti-doping authorities to do their valuable job.
At this stage in the ongoing process we will not add any further detail.’

Tiernan-Locke had twenty days to respond to the letter, but then sought and was granted an extension while he prepared his case to explain the anomaly.

Before running with the story, I called him, and left a message on his voicemail asking him to call back. He did not respond.

EPILOGUE

When the invitation came to travel with Team Sky in 2013 and experience the dips and swells of a season in a pro team, I was in two minds. If Team Sky was all that Dave
Brailsford said it was, then the time spent with them would refresh the palate and flush the bad taste left by the Lance years. In truth, I was keen to fall in love with the sport again.

On the other hand there was the fear of disappointment. Finding or even suspecting that Brailsford was running the cycling equivalent of a speakeasy presented no journalistic difficulties, but
personally to see the sport screwing its people all over again would have been too much. After all that has gone before, cycling more than any other sport needs to offer some hope, some proof of
integrity.

I believe I found that. Everybody else can make up their own mind, but I believe that David Brailsford deserves a fair hearing first. I didn’t find an organisation which always lives up to
the billing it provides for itself, but Team Sky try. The nascent team’s biggest achievements have been the Tours de France of 2012 and 2013. Yet those victories were bookended by the
Leinders affair and by the Jonathan Tiernan-Locke business. For many, those bookends are all that can be seen.

The Jonathan Tiernan-Locke business gave me a few shivers of
déjà vu
when it arose. These are not pleasant things to write about at any time, and especially not after a
summer in the sun. Suddenly I found myself back in those dark places, old sources ringing and talking science instead of sport. Life is too short to be starting a PhD in Haematology at age
sixty.

The news for Tiernan-Locke and Team Sky seems mixed at the time of writing at the beginning of November 2013. Sources confirm that the problem is a single test from late 2012, a few months
before he officially became a Sky rider. The case, should it go forward, will hinge on the rider’s explanation for a very low percentage of reticulocytes in that test. Reticulocytes are
immature red cells that circulate for a day in the body before developing into mature cells. They should comprise 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent of the total red cell population.

Abnormally low reticulocyte numbers can be caused by various conditions, mostly to do with anaemia, but they can also be triggered by a problem with erythropoietin production, which in turn
could have related to use of synthetic or recombinant EPO. An uncommonly low reticulocyte count is not easily accounted for and Tiernan-Locke’s fate will hinge on the credibility of his
explanation.

The young rider could well have a satisfactory explanation, but Team Sky still needs to absorb the lessons of how they left themselves exposed once again to the jeers and catcalls of their
detractors. A refreshing aspect of life within Team Sky is the willingness to absorb those lessons. Over the space of a few months, I found that I could put to Dave Brailsford the harshest of
accusations about the failures of his protocols, and if he thought it reasonable he would take it on the chin and explain how he intended to deal with it. If doing the same thing over and over
again but expecting different results suggests a sign of madness, Brailsford is eminently sane.

After the 2013 season, for instance, Team Sky had to look at the annual issue of freshening up the team. In retrospect, most around the team would quietly admit that simply having Googled
Jonathan Tiernan-Locke’s name would have revealed the suspicions (however fair or unfair) articulated about the rider in
L’ Equipe
. They certainly would have revealed the need
for a more rigorous examination of the rider’s credentials than relying on the fact that Jonathan Vaughters’ Garmin team had tested him once and found things satisfactory, but with the
caveat that they wanted him back for more tests. Regardless of the outcome of Tiernan-Locke’s eventual case (if any), the need for more improvement in the recruiting process is accepted.

For the 2014 season, the biggest of Team Sky’s signings has been Mikel Nieve, a Spanish climber from the Euskaltel team, who has a proven Tour record.

What were the protocols this time?

First and foremost, clarity. Team Sky stressed relentlessly the importance of the rider understanding team policy in relation to drugs and where Team Sky are at the moment.

Next, the rider hands over his biological passport passwords. With these, Sky can mine and examine data that stretches back to 2009, when the rider first became part of a WorldTour team.
Normally Sky would request this data set from the UCI. With permission the UCI will supply more information on the blood samples. If the team has questions, they can zoom in on particular values at
particular times: was he training that day, was he racing or at what point of the season did that test take place?

The bio-passport data is then sent off to independent experts who have zero interest in whether Nieve or anyone else joins Team Sky, only that their bio-passport numbers stack up. Sky has a sort
of ranking system with which to analyse the results.

Additionally they spoke to several people at great length about Nieve. Not just stakeholders in his career, but a contact they trusted who had worked with Nieve at Euskaltel. They went to their
sources and looked as deep as they could for intelligence.

At the other end of the spectrum from Nieve was the signing of Nathan Earle, a well-respected young Australian making the same step up from Pro Continental level which brought Jonathan
Tiernan-Locke to Team Sky’s attention. Earle was tested to within an inch of his life.

Signing new riders is a competitive business, though. So what Sky have said is that in future they will commit to a rider only when the ‘i’s are dotted and the ‘t’s
crossed. That is, they have gathered the intelligence and satisfied themselves about the data. Until that moment, they will retain the right to release the rider without penalty.

For Sky, though, that is never enough. Correcting mistakes is one thing. Finding a better way forward is another. Brailsford and Kerrison have made a point of stepping down off the pedestal and
engaging and speaking with cycling people with greater experience of doping. Their backgrounds, far from the doping heartland of the old continent, have been no help. To better make your way in a
clean world, you need to know the terrain of the doper.

And they have taken apart the biological passport system for a forensic analysis.

Their conclusions on just how robust a tool the passport is will make interesting reading. There is a growing feeling within the world of drug testing that, with the best will in the world,
authorities are trying to make this tool work at a level of sensitivity that it isn’t designed for. If there are chances of a false positive, the entire system will be undermined.

As it stands the disciplinary panel look at data anomalies in isolation. They ask themselves how can this quirk be explained through the context of doping. Would microdosing fit the picture?
Blood doping maybe. Then they ask the athlete to explain why the anomaly wouldn’t be down to doping. Generally the athlete isn’t equipped to know.

Much of the winter of 2013 was spent reviewing what had happened during the summer. Brailsford’s feeling during 2013, successful though it had been, was that the ripples from the USADA
report into Lance Armstrong and co had been so seismic that the team hadn’t spent enough time the previous winter assessing and revising their own protocols. It had been a time to just get up
on the roof and fix everything that might need fixing. A cruel and brutal time.

At the end of 2013, Brailsford intended to set aside the first week of December and dedicate it to reworking the core values of his team. He wanted to do a lot of work on the behavioural side of
what Team Sky do. He is talking again about ‘winning behaviours’.

He intended to ask the staff and riders what would stop them winning the Tour de France in 2014. What would stop them winning a longed-for classic. What might cause disharmony. From small groups
answers would be fed back, a list of losing behaviours if you like. From there the task would be to find the winning behaviours. That is our way.

To many of his detractors that would sound like typical Dave Brailsford speak. Everything has a label as if being sold from a shelf, but speaking to him as he talks about his desire to keep
winning and to be trusted he says things which challenge the usual rap against him.

He talks of needing even more openness and transparency. Maintaining the same level of performance is very important, but Team Sky will be looking to collaborate more openly with science
community experts to provide more evidence and be more open. Blood data, power data, training regimes; he would hand them all to genuine experts in a heartbeat. Let them draw conclusions that would
be beyond reproach.

Even the small things with the team are up for review. Through the long season that brought the second Tour de France, Chris Froome, the star of the production had virtually his own personal
soigneur
(or carer) in David Rozman. This helped Froome but it caused small ripples. Rozman was occasionally unable to perform the other tasks that
soigneurs
were asked to do.
Someone had to cover for him. Lead carer Mario Pafundi thought it wasn’t right.

So Brailsford and Rod Ellingworth and Tim Kerrison talked about it. David Rozman had worked hard and done a good job, but he wasn’t employed by Chris Froome, he worked for Team Sky. Within
the team’s inner sanctum, any move towards individual relationships is considered a slightly dangerous thing. So Rozman was gently told he wouldn’t be doing Froome that much in 2014.
Like Premiership footballers, Sky’s carers will be rotated. In most teams, if the star rider wanted to be rubbed down every evening by Scarlett Johansson, someone would try to make it
happen.

That is what keeps me interested. Team Sky are organic, a work in progress. They get things wrong, of course they do, but they plan and build in a post-nuclear winter. As such they are
pioneers.

No sport has ever laid waste to itself like cycling has. No sport has had to vacate the winner’s podium seven times in its iconic event. No sport has records so liberally spangled with
asterisks cautioning us that the adventures within may be entirely fictional. As Sandro Donati once said, the good thing about the theatre is that the audience knows it’s not for real.

Team Sky are yomping across territory which no team has previously explored. And they have chosen to hobble themselves with their zero tolerance policy. When they make a mistake, they go back
and they stand at the drawing board conscious that the air is filled with laughter and sneers and envy. In fact, even when they succeed they find their way back to that drawing board. They are
always looking for ways to fail less and to succeed better.

They won the 2013 Tour de France but along the route to Corsica and the start of that race, they know they got so much wrong.

Dave Brailsford once said to me that his team’s expedition through the wastelands of modern professional cycling was jeopardised by the fact that the people the team depended upon –
Tim Kerrison, Rod Ellingworth, Alan Farrell and himself – had all come from the clean side of the tracks. I believed him. They don’t think like cheats.

For the cynic – and the legacy of Lance has ensured cycling is littered with cynicism so potent it is only rivalled by his career – this is a hard line to digest. Many still believe
that for Team Sky to succeed not only do they have to be cheating, but they have to be cheating better than anybody has ever cheated.

That is what I set out to examine when I went to live within the tent Brailsford has pitched. That is why this book concerns itself more with the hands who hold the reins than it does with the
hands which grip the handlebars. For Team Sky to cheat on the levels which their detractors allege – and in social media those allegations come in blizzards of libel – they would have
to be operating a cheating wing to the organisation which consumed as much time and energy as the actual cycling did.

I bow to no man when it comes to cynicism and scepticism about extraordinary achievements in cycling. But like the apostle Thomas, I need to put my finger on the scar left by the EPO needle. To
speak to someone with more than just a gut feeling. I came to Team Sky after more than a decade fishing in the toxic world of Lance. I came with the stories of Tyler Hamilton and Floyd Landis in my
bloodstream. The first thing that occurred to me was that no team operating like Lance’s teams operated could ever afford to invite a journalist into the tent. Too much to keep hidden. Rozman
put his finger on it: ‘You will know,’ he said, ‘from the conversations that stop when you walk into the room.’