Inside Team Sky (4 page)

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 because 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?

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.