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news
Nicole Cooke at 2010 GB road nats (copyright britishcycling.org.uk)Nicole Cooke rejects claim that Team Sky is ‘cleanest’ in cycling
Nicole Cooke says she doesn’t find Team Sky’s claims of being the ‘cleanest’ team in cycling credible. The BBC reports that she is also ‘sceptical’ about Sir Bradley Wiggins’ controversial use of therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) ahead of major goals.
Wiggins was granted a TUE to take anti-inflammatory drug triamcinolone before the 2011 Tour de France, his 2012 Tour win and the 2013 Giro d'Italia.
Giving evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport select committee yesterday, ex-Olympic champion Cooke said:
“The chronological coincidence of the TUEs just before major events raises suspicions with me based on my experience of patterns and ways that I’ve seen other riders try and beat the system.”
While expressing scepticism, she did however add that, “I don’t have the medical knowledge to make an informed decision of the medical side of it.”
Wiggins himself has said that the timing of the injections was due to the ‘unpredictable’ nature of his allergies.
Cooke also questioned former Team Sky head coach Shane Sutton’s testimony to parliament that he had not been involved in Wiggins’s TUE process, saying “that does not ring true with my experiences of coaches.”
Asked whether she found Team Sky’s claims that they are running the cleanest team in cycling credible, Cooke said that she didn’t and referred to the ongoing mystery surrounding the contents of the package delivered for Wiggins at the 2011 Critérium du Dauphiné.
“I think the stance of being the ‘cleanest’ team and yet the team principal, Sir Dave Brailsford, not knowing what the riders were treated with, definitely makes it hard to back up that claim,” she said.
In her written evidence to the committee, Cooke also claimed that it was ‘pertinent’ that there was a connection between Wiggins and Simon Cope, the man who delivered that package.
Both men rode for the Linda McCartney team which UK Anti-Doping has been investigating since 2012 and Cooke expressed frustration at the lack of results.
“As recently as June 2016 three of the British members of this team, Sean Yates, Max Sciandri and Matt Stephens, who is a commentator on the sport for Eurosport, all stated that Ukad had made no contact with them. Four years on – how patient do we have to be, or are Ukad doing nothing?”
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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30 comments
Whilst i admire Cooke for her undoubted ability on a bike in whatever discipline she has gone for and she is right about the inequality between male and female, which seriously needs looking at i feel that due to this her evidence against Sky and Wiggins is slightly tainted due to the hurt she feels.
One of the issues that Cooke really highlights is the missed opportunities at British cycling with women's cycling. Success should breed success and with a little more profile it could. For a current example, women's hockey is a growing sport at the moment and that is directly attributable to Olympic success and just as importantly, the profile given to the sport. Sometimes you have to give a helping hand.
Consider Rachel Atherton's domination of downhill mountain biking. In terms of achievement and consistency (especially in a sport with so many random variables) it's right up there but so few have heard of her beyond the narrow sphere of their discipline.
Personally I think British cycling deserves the rocket that is coming its way and I think Cooke's comments on TUE's are spot on.
Troublesome. I find her accounts to be credible, sensible, and the events described unfair and disappointing. I completely agree that women's sport should be treated equally; in terms of funding/investment, reporting, profile, etc. There is no reason why there can't be a 200-strong women's professional peloton and I'd love to see it.
But what does equality mean? Cooke's world/Tour/Giro/etc wins are immensely impressive achievements - but let's not pretend that winning the Tour Feminin was an equivalent achievement to winning the men's Tour. Were there 200 professional riders on it? Could any one of a dozen top-class riders have won - or was it ultimately just one of three or four? Clearly it's not the same thing.
So, in terms of 'investment' - let's say we wanted to start a womens' team today that would win the Giro Fem or the Women's Tour (as the biggest women's stage races) with a British rider within five years. Would it need the £millions in training and funding that the men's team Sky did? Almost certainly not. If the goal can be achieved on less money, is it fair or unfair to spend less?
Ferrand-Prevot is not a bloody roadie!
Draw your own conclusions or whatever but people just aren't as interested in women's sport. Part of that comes down to women not being as interested in watching sport as men.
I'm not suggesting that men watch men's sports and women watch women's but women in sport can't expect the male audience to prop things up all the time. The big spenders on sports TV are men (NFL audience is 73% male), maybe people like Nicole Cooke need to convince their own gender to start watching a bit more?
The general population wasn't remotely interested in the Tour de France until recent years. Does that mean it shouldn't have been broadcast in the UK before Team Sky existed? It's only blokes on bikes, anyone can do that!
If people knew (and, more importantly, cared) about the discrimination in distribution of resources between men and women, including in British Cycling, then perhaps Nicole's comments would be taken more seriously. Those who are so quick to slag her off are always men who have no interest in women's cycling and don't really want equality or fairness for them.
TBH I find women's racing equally engaging, especially cyclo-cross.
Me too, although that might be partly because we have some good British women cross riders.
The women's competition is more open too - the men's race almost invariably comes down to either van Aert or van der Poel.
The last two female world champs have been roadies Ferrand-Prevot and de Jongh. Vos is back and looking good, and Cant is always thereabouts. Throw in the likes of Nash, De Boer, Compton, Brammeier, Wyman, Lechner and (course dependent) Verscheuren and there are a lot of potential winners of women's cyclocross races.
does make you wonder what's she's being doing with her time all these years. Though, if a national/world/olympic champion in 4 different disciplines can't even convince those who are being paid to coach her to do their job, it does suggest even more difficulties in everything else you think she should be doing. Not her responsibility. BC took public funds to develop cycling, they should be accountable. Seems reasonable to me
Nicole Cooke supplied names, places and dates, of suspect riders and their performances yet those tasked with anti-doping have failed to follow up on her information.
Nicole Cooke listed her correspondance with British Cycling about how the team was organised, riders selected for races/ funding and explains how she only ever received meaningful responses once her MP got involved. Yet most responses to this article have been to accuse her of having a chip on her shoulder!
Discussion of her evidence should be encouraged. If she is wrong about UKAD ignoring her evidence, or wrong in her description of the behaviour of the national federation, then it should be called-out. But ad-hominem attacks are simply wrong.
It is not nice think that incompetence and sexism undermined her career and those of other riders. One option is to write it off as happening in the past and to say that things were different then. But to give an example from Nicole Cooke's own evidence Brian Cookson has still not delivered his promise to pay female riders the minimum wage. Has anything really changed?
If the women's seats are slightly wider and £1 more, is this not an unfair distribution of wealth?
Everyone is competing within a myriad of rules, finances and other factors; it's not as simple as saying they didn't get money because they are women...
well, they didn't get their training camp because their coach was being an errand boy across Europe for another team, and NC has pages of evidence of occasions where she and her team were denied resources made available to the men's squad. Was that because of gender bias? I don't know, I wasn't there or know anyone who was, but she certainly makes a compelling case
Yes. It really is. Nicole Cooke, multiple national champ and occasional world champ and generally more successful than everyone in the history of UK cycling (except perhaps Burton, Cav and Wiggo) had times when she had to self fund her own kit and didn't get a support team at international events while the men got a team of 5 (those successful and well known male cyclists around the year 2000. Anyone name some... No?).
Before criticising Nicole Cooke people would do well to read her book. She is articulate, measured and while she's clearly pissed off at the establishment she had/has a damn good reason to be.
Her response to this is nothing new to anyone who has bothered to follow the issues which frankly makes her calm engagement with the process even more remarkable.
She does make a good biscuit though.
I can't be alone in not being concerned about equality in sport surely? Are there any blokes out there on a crusade to make Netball equal? In fact, elite sport should be equal, where to I sign up for a Pro Team to enter the TDF, I am way below standard but surely I'm equal?
Why can't people just strive to be the best that they can be?
Nicole Cooke was a very, very good cyclist. Read her evidence/book, there's no lack of talent or striving. Her point is that the sudden flood of public money into BC was mainly directed towards the men, not all of whom excelled, whereas if the distribution had been a bit more equal, then her highly talented (but perhaps less stroppy) female team-mates would have done better. They literally didn't have the equipment and opportunity to race that the men were given, and ended up giving up the sport
you can strive all you like, but when your coach is off delivering a mystery jiffy bag to someone in a different team when he was being paid with public money to organise a training camp, then maybe your results won't match your potential
have you been watching those razor adverts again?
I don't understand this post. Why can't people just strive to be the best they can? The main block of Cooke's evidence was that over 50% of the population wasn't given the chance to be 'the best they can'.
You probably aren't alone in not being concerned about equality (obviously, given the evidence), but the question must be - why? Everyone can recognise that in general women are not as physically strong or fast as men, but that's irrelevant - it's the spectacle of the sport that people want to watch. Women competing against women is just as interesting and exciting as men competing against men, even if the statistics are different.
'If the women's seats are slightly wider and £1 more, is this not an unfair distribution of wealth?'
Err...what!?
You've got a point, as does @Yorkshire Wallet in his comment on the market for women's sport.
This is different, though, because we're not just talking about people being their best, women riding bikes slower than men, or women spectators handing over less cash than men.
Central to Cooke's allegation is the suggestion of bias and unfair use of public money.
It's to be expected really: blokes from similar backgrounds identify with blokes from similar backgrounds. You don't have to go into any club with the mindset that you'll discriminate, to find out that you gravitate towards particular sorts.
However, when the funding was intended to be used across disciplines and sexes, management needed to spend it (and the publicly funded employees' time) representatively - or 'fairly'. Cooke's argument is that they didn't; her particular gripe is that the 'favourites' were men and men's cycling, and there've been other complaints that discplines (eg BMX) were also sidelined.
Does it depend on how you define clean?
Is it "everything within the rules to win"
or "above reproach"?
I think i recall Dave Brailsford saying the former on TV, but am not 100% sure.
If you're meaning the former, it's quite believable that Sky could be the cleanest team in cycling. If you mean the latter, I think there are TUE questions to be answered, and possibly others too, but I don't think it disproves the claim until you've examined the other teams too. Might they have been subject to less scrutiny because of less high-profile success?
She has very forthright opinions but you also have to remember that she is not a trained orator, barrister, politician or whatever standing in front of the baying self-interested members of a select committee, she is just an ordinary girl (albeit an outstanding sports person) so it is easy to pick holes in what she is saying and how she may present her thoughts but they are valid opinions based on a long real experience of the institution of sport in the UK.
Unless she has knowledge of all of the other pro teams - how would she be able to say that Sky are not the cleanest ?
Compare Sky with Armstrongs teams. How many doping scandals did they have. And what's come out of Sky ? Nothing concrete.
Nothing came out of Postal/Discovery either until Armstrong retired & the other main guys were winding down their careers.
There is more evidence of Wiggins using a banned substance (although authorised by a TUE) than was against Armstrong at a similar point in their careers.
FWIW I don't think Sky are organising a team wide doping programme ala US Postal but their 'naive' behaviour allows people to ask difficult questions.
Not the filthiest isn't the same as cleanest. There have been more than two cycling teams in the history of cycling.
Yes, she has knowledge of other pro teams,as does everyone. FDJ, Cannondale-Drapac, Giant-Sunweb all have better reputations at this point than Sky. Are they clean? Who knows. No one knows all the facts at this point, just what's come out. But cleaner than Sky? Most likely.
She has a huge knowledge of how teams work having spent a lifetime in the sport and worked in clean and dirty teams.
If you read what she actually said then you'd know she was suggesting that as Dave B you can't claim that Sky is the cleanest if you also claim not to know what was in the 'urgent medical delivery' that Wiggo received and why it was shipped from the UK when the required drugs were available at every pharmacy in France.
Her comment was to point out that every dodgy manager in the history of every sport has defended their team while sitting on an alibi which happens to prove that they weren't involved.
She didn't say Sky were guilty, she said the actions we've been hearing about follow a worryingly familiar pattern and you have to be pretty thick skinned not to agree.
Well, none until they did. You can't say a team is clean because no one has found any evidence to the contrary yet.
And I'd like to believe Sky are clean.
How to make friends and influence people by Nicole Cooke
national, world and olympic champion,on road, TT, mtb and cross. Think she might have a few useful insights, which is why she was called to Parliament to give them. Just because some men don't want to hear them doesn't make them any less pertinent. I read her and Wiggins' books when they came out, guess which is getting more credible by the day ...
I wonder if she got any fish with all those chips on her shoulders?
“I don’t have the medical knowledge to make an informed decision of the medical side of it.”
But that didnt stop you casting aspertions though did it?
http://road.cc/content/news/216201-british-cycling-%E2%80%98run-men-men%...
quite
Highly successful and decorated British cyclist asked to appear before UK Parliament Committee relating to her experience of interractions with the bodies responsible for administering cycling in UK who receive large amounts of public funding.
She provides a 10 page written submission of events, including names, dates and places of her tireless attempts to have women's cycling treated as anything other than an afterthought, and the deflection, rejection and general "slopey shouldered" nature of the people running these bodies.
She was asked for her opinion, and gave it, based on her experience as an elite cyclist.
Frankly, having read her written submission to The Committee, Nicole Cooke goes way up in my estimation for her patience, persistence and ability to succeed without the massive help afforded to many of her male peers.
I haven't read this submission but I hugely admire her acheivements and her commitment to raising the profile of women's cycling. However I do feel that she is in danger of overshadowing these things with this type of public proclamation that seem to be based on little but gut feeling and her (mostly understandable) anger at British Cycling.