Shropshire Star

UCI boss Brian Cookson angered by draft report

A final version of the report was published on June 14 with much of the draft’s more strident language removed.

Published

Former British Cycling president Brian Cookson admits he was “angry” with the explosive draft report into claims of bullying and discrimination within the Great Britain team, which was leaked to the media in March.

A final version of the report was published on June 14 with much of the draft’s more strident language removed. However, it still strongly criticised the governing body’s lack of oversight over a team surprisingly low on morale, the board’s mishandling of ex-sprinter Jess Varnish’s discrimination complaint and a failure to address former technical director Shane Sutton’s weaknesses as a leader.

Cookson served as its president from 1997 to 2013, having saved it from bankruptcy in 1996, and now fulfils the same role with world governing body the UCI.

Cookson told Press Association Sport that the final report, which took 14 months to produce, is “much more balanced” and has “lessons for everybody, including me”, but there is no mistaking his annoyance about how the saga played out.

“What I was personally angry about was the idea that the 17 years of effort I put in – largely as an unpaid volunteer – transforming the British Cycling Federation from the basket case it was in 1996, to the successful organisation it became, seems to have been largely ignored,” he said.

“And there were some in the media who portrayed me as a figure who presided over a culture of fear and intimidation. That’s not an organisation I recognise.”

He believes much of the damage done to British Cycling’s reputation – and, by association, his own – could have been avoided if the independent panel which wrote the report had consulted more widely.

Set up in April 2016, the panel was meant to look at “the climate and culture” of the GB team from 2008, and riders and staff, past and present, were invited to contribute.

Cookson, however, was not asked to do so, despite chairing British Cycling’s board until 2013, when he stood for the UCI presidency.

Having correctly opted out of British Cycling communications, Cookson did not get either of the two emailed invitations in 2016 but contacted the panel just before Christmas to ask why they had not asked to speak to him.

He was told the panel was concentrating on 2012 to 2016, “when the problems became more apparent”, and they did not think it was “relevant” to invite him. Cookson, however, contacted them again in January after reading comments on social media from others who had contributed.

“I thought ‘hang on a minute, there’s another side to this’,” he said.

He was then invited to take part in the legal process, known as Maxwellisation, in which those criticised get the right to reply. The leaked draft, which questioned British Cycling’s right to call itself a governing body, was written during this process but before Cookson and several other major players had responded.

On one of the biggest issues raised by the report, whether British Cycling’s leadership ignored warnings about the GB team made in an internal report in December 2012, Cookson presents a different picture to the one painted in vivid colours by the draft.

He said he never received the report which was prepared by former British Cycling chief executive Peter King for his successor Ian Drake and has checked this with King himself.

What he and the rest of the board got was a summary of its findings from Drake, including some references to “behavioural issues” within the GB team, which they then addressed with a four-year action plan for the entire organisation.

A key part of this plan, said Cookson, was the “triumvirate” at the top of the GB team – performance director Sir Dave Brailsford, psychiatrist Dr Steve Peters and head coach Shane Sutton – staying in place until Rio 2016 but with Sutton moving away from coaching athletes to a new role working with the other coaches.

“Based on what we were told, I thought we had acted on the problems, accepted the recommendations and authorised the chief executive to carry out the action plan,” he said.

Sorry, we are not accepting comments on this article.