British Cycling’s reputation faces the prospect of another battering after it was accused of misleading UK Sport, the body that provides it with millions of pounds of public money each year, by covering up allegations of bullying in an internal report after London 2012.
Liz Nicholl, the chief executive of UK Sport, said British Cycling had displayed “a complete lack of transparency” by giving UK Sport a summary of an internal performance review conducted by its former CEO Peter King which did not accurately reflect the facts of the report.
When it was put to Nicholl that this was tantamount to a cover-up, she nodded before adding: “We wouldn’t expect that to happen. We would have expected to receive the full report at the time. That’s a complete lack of transparency and that’s a relationship that is not acceptable in terms of what was shared with us as opposed to what the actual facts of that report were.”
King interviewed more than 40 riders and staff at British Cycling after the London Olympics for the internal report which was never published and was made available to only a handful of people. The full report, which was delivered by King on 11 November 2012, flagged up some of the issues with cycling that emerged in the public domain last year. Yet UK Sport saw a full copy of King’s full report only in 2016 – nearly four years after it had been completed.
When asked if UK Sport could have tackled the culture at British Cycling if the organisation had seen the full report in 2012, Nicholl replied: “Yes, of course. But what we received from them as a summary of what the report was saying did not raise any alarm bells at all.”
However British Cycling insisted they did properly brief UK Sport and the British Cycling board about the King report in 2012. “In September 2012 then British Cycling chief executive, Ian Drake, asked his predecessor Peter King to conduct an assessment of the UK Sport-funded world class programme at the close of the London Olympic cycle,” it said. “Contributions were made with a guarantee of anonymity, so key findings and recommendations were shared in briefings with UK Sport and the British Cycling board.”
Nicholl said that Drake, who left British Cycling earlier than planned last month, was the accountable officer with the responsibility for handing over the report. He was unable to be reached on Tuesday. King, however, denied knowing that only a summary of his report had been sent to UK Sport in 2012.
“The honest truth is I don’t know what version of my report was shared with UK Sport, either then or now,” he said. “And I don’t really want to say anything about all of this until the independent report comes out. As far as I’m aware my original report was delivered to Ian Drake and I don’t know how much further it went after that.”
King said he did not think the full board of British Cycling had seen his report either but claimed that various presentations had been made to staff about the lessons needed to be learned. “What I do know is that a lot of people told me things in my report that they would have expected to see acted upon,” he added. “And I don’t want them to think it was my fault that they haven’t been.”
UK Sport’s claims may also raise questions for the UCI president Brian Cookson, who was president of British Cycling at the time of the report. However a UCI spokesman said, “It would be inappropriate to comment,” before the long-awaited report into British Cycling’s culture is published
UK Sport has denied it is sitting on that report, which it now says will be delayed by at least another month. It was due to be published last November after being commissioned in April 2016. But its publication date has been repeatedly pushed back due to the large number of interviews, the fear of legal challenge and a broader scope than originally planned.
“First of all, we’re not sitting on it. It is not complete,” Nicholl said. “We’re going through due process, which is lengthy and legal, as you can imagine. What we’ve done is commissioned a little bit more work for the review group to undertake now, which is what is happening. We want to protect the anonymity of those athletes who have come forward in good faith and do not want their futures to be compromised. We’ve also got a duty to towards all the people named in the report, and we’re taking every step to make sure that it’s a fair report that will stand up to scrutiny by the media and lawyers and everybody else, and that takes a long time. And when it’s ready, we’ll be ready.”
Rod Carr, the chair of UK Sport, denied that the report being at least five months late will be a problem. “We’re working to get it right, not get it out to a timetable,” he said. “In the big scheme of things looking back 10 years, whether it’s in November or March is not going to make any difference. Get it wrong, it’ll make a big difference. We’ve got to get it right.
“We don’t want a situation where somebody who might be called a whistleblower is so traduced by the establishment that nobody ever comes forward again. So, that’s one of the reasons we’ve got to get this right, not just get it done.”
Trevor Pearce has been appointed the new chair of UK Anti-Doping for a term of four years. Pearce, a former director general of the National Crime Squad and the Serious Organised Crime Agency, takes over from David Kenworthy.
