Inside Team Sky (35 page)

But on the deck of this sinking vessel stood John Herety, a former European pro. He was
directeur sportif
at the Rapha Condor team and he remembered Tiernan-Locke back when the young
rider from Devon had made the British U23 team. He offered him a place in the Rapha team for 2011 and at the age of 25, the rider at last had the opportunity to show he could compete against pros.
Rapha was a relatively small team but well enough organised and they could get into some of the better races.

At the end of season, Tiernan-Locke won the mountains jersey and finished fifth overall in the Tour of Britain. That won him a place on the stronger Endura team who would campaign in Europe and
offered him a bigger stage. It didn’t take long for Tiernan-Locke to show he could compete successfully at a higher level. On the second weekend of February 2012, Tiernan-Locke won two stages
and overall victory in the Tour Méditerranéen. A week later he won the second stage and overall victory at the Tour du Haut Var, a race he had won as an amateur seven years
before.

Through the eyes of his fellow riders in those two races, this was a 27-year-old who had come from nowhere to emphatically beat them in the mountains. They weren’t just disappointed. Some
were disgusted. How could this ‘unknown’ rider from a lower-tier Pro Continental team beat guys from elite WorldTour teams?
L’Equipe
’s reporter at these early
season races inhaled the scepticism.

‘Are we in the presence of a champion or a chimera? Tiernan-Locke can only be one or the other in order to win five races in a row [two stages and overall at Tour
Méditerranéen, second stage and overall at Tour du Haut Var]? He’s part of a team from the third division, a category where the riders don’t have to submit to biological
monitoring, via the blood passport programme of the Union Cycliste Internationale.

‘What do his peers think? With the microphone on, not much. But with the tape recorder turned off, they express some deep doubts.’

L’Equipe
wasn’t the only refuge for those wishing to unload their suspicion. It could also be found on social media outlets. The rider himself was aware of what was being
said. ‘I’ve heard the rumours, and the suspicion,’ he said in that March 2012 interview with
Cyclingnews
. ‘I’ve heard it all. I don’t know what to say
other than I’ll do whatever it takes to show people, so I’ll be doing weekly, or bi-weekly, blood tests. Like I said, whatever it takes.

‘I can’t let things like that get to me. There were comments made but I think a lot of it is sour grapes but it still does piss me off.’

He went on to say that if he was guilty of anything it was that he had in the past engaged in the same rumour-mongering that he was now a victim of. ‘In the past, I’ve been guilty of
that. Laughing at performances when I don’t know what’s fact or not but when it happens to you . . . It will make me look at other riders differently in the future and if I’ve
learnt something it’s that I wouldn’t be as critical as other people.’

Finally, he reiterated his intention of undergoing voluntary blood-testing. ‘Whether they’re weekly or bi-weekly, I don’t know yet. I just want to remove any doubt.’

General manager of the Endura team Brian Smith confirmed that when Tiernan-Locke’s performances were questioned, the rider volunteered for blood tests. ‘I am one hundred per cent
certain he is clean,’ said Smith. ‘He was the one pushing me last year to get him on the biological passport when he heard there were rumours after he won a couple of big
races.’

Of course, the UCI could not change their rules to accommodate Tiernan-Locke. He wasn’t in the top league and so could not be part of the bio-passport scheme. But this wouldn’t
remain the case for long. WorldTour teams Garmin and Sky wanted him.

Wishing to have a closer look, Sky invited Tiernan-Locke to a training camp in Tenerife in early April. Before that, he had been down to Girona for blood and physiological testing with Team
Garmin. Any rider being seriously considered by Garmin has to undergo blood and physiological testing before a deal can be done. Ideally the rider shows up the morning after he’s ridden well
in a race, so his prospective employers can see his blood values when on top form.

On 26 March Tiernan-Locke turned up at Garmin’s European headquarters in Girona where he had a blood test, did an hour’s intensive effort on a stationary bike and then had another
blood test. The first blood test gives some basic values, the physical effort offers a reading of the rider’s physiological capacity and the second blood test gives a value that will be
skewed by dehydration.

If blood values rise sharply when dehydrated, it may be because the rider has taken saline solution to dilute their blood concentrations for the first test.

Tiernan-Locke’s blood results from that day’s testing were normal. His performance on the bike suggested good but not outstanding physiological capacity. A solid B-grade but not the
A needed to win races on the WorldTour. The rider explained he felt run down and Garmin weren’t put off. They wanted him back for a second round of testing and preferably when he was riding
well and not run down.

A week later Tiernan-Locke went to Tenerife with Team Sky. They knew he’d been to Garmin for testing and that the American team was still interested in him. That meant there was nothing
irregular about his test results. Both Brailsford and Rod Ellingworth knew Rapha’s
DS
John Herety and Julien Winn who had worked with Tiernan-Locke at Endura. From conversations with
both, they harboured no doubts about the rider’s ethics.

Had Garmin manager Jonathan Vaughters been aware of the scepticism surrounding Tiernan-Locke after the Tour Méditerranéen he wouldn’t have given it that much credence. He had
been through this with Ramunas Navardauskas, the young Lithuanian whom Garmin wanted to sign in 2010. He had won so many U23 races in France that many of those he was beating, and others, muttered
under their breath that they were sure he had to be doping. Even riders within his own team told Vaughters not to touch Navardauskas. Such is the fear and loathing in cycling post Lance.

Garmin’s boss didn’t go along with the consensus, so he did what he always does. He let the rider know he would be interested in having him on the team but a final decision would be
made only after the team ran some blood and physiological testing. His blood values were entirely normal, and his physiological testing suggested he was an extremely talented bike rider.

Following the initial test results, Garmin waited for Navardauskas to perform well in a race and then arranged for him to travel immediately to Girona. The day is well planned. The rider is
picked up at the airport and does the first blood test before he is taken to breakfast. While digesting his meal, the rider finds out what the contract might look like should everything run
smoothly. Then, the power test.

At all times, there’s someone from Garmin in his company and straight after the power test comes the second blood test. Results from the two blood tests are set against each other. Again,
the results showed very normal blood values and extraordinary power output. Vaughters satisfied himself, as much as any team boss could, that Ramunas Navardauskas was both highly talented and
clean. He signed him.

Vaughters wanted to get Tiernan-Locke back for a second round of testing, preferably on the day after he’d finished a race in which he’d performed well. They tried but always
something cropped up. Tiernan-Locke kept winning, though, adding the midsummer Tour of Alsace to his early-season victories in the south of France. He remained on Garmin’s radar.

If there’s one thing worse for Team Sky than getting into a bidding war with Garmin, it is losing that war. Especially if the rider happens to be British. Team Sky detect a piety in
Vaughters which gets under their collective skin. It is odd because both teams are among the white knights trying to rescue the sport, but they are natural rivals in their respective approaches.
Vaughters passionately disagrees with Sky’s policy of not allowing anyone with a doping past to work in their team.

Being Vaughters, being the affable J V, he couldn’t stop himself leaking a little
Schadenfreude
at Sky’s turmoil when Sean Yates, Steven de Jongh and Bobby Julich had to
leave the team at the end of 2012. If Vaughters had applied his intellect to devising the best way to get under Brailsford’s skin, he wouldn’t have come up with anything more effective
than the prodding at the misfortune of his rivals.

So Brailsford didn’t want Tiernan-Locke joining Garmin, while Vaughters would not have beaten himself up with guilt about pinching a rider from Sky’s domestic pastures. Andrew
McQuaid, son of the former UCI president Pat and agent to many riders, did what everyone in his job does by playing one off against the other.

Then Tiernan-Locke, still riding with Endura, won the end-of-season Tour of Britain. Jackpot! He was a trophy signing now. Team Sky just had to have him. They offered a two-year contract on the
kind of money that Tiernan-Locke wouldn’t have dreamt of three years before. Garmin stayed interested but in the end, they couldn’t compete. Like a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman,
Brailsford got his man.

Without wishing to sound arrogant, Team Sky would have thought, ‘If he can win four stage-race victories with Endura, how many is he going to claim with us?’ There was no telling how
good Tiernan-Locke might become.

It never worked out.

He was often sick, couldn’t seem to handle the training load and didn’t ride to the level expected. From the twenty-seven riders on Sky’s roster in 2013, his performances were
the most disappointing. He blamed it on the training, which he considered too intense and made him feel run down and low on energy. Sky, and especially Kerrison, listen to what riders say and it is
common for them to lighten the training load for those struggling to cope.

Before the end of the season Tiernan-Locke spoke with Shane Stokes for an interview that appeared on the
Velonation
website and accepted some responsibility for what had been a terrible
season. ‘I guess some of what happened this year is my fault, in terms of not being more communicative with my coaches,’ he said.

A month later, it was members of the UCI medical panel who were after his communication.

That Saturday telephone interview with Brailsford was difficult.

He’d had a tough week in Italy. In the days before the Cookson/McQuaid presidential contest, there was gossip about Team Sky and whispered talk about suspect bio passports that went beyond
Tiernan-Locke. From people in Cookson’s camp, he heard that people on the other side were saying Sky might not be as pure as the driven snow. Though assured that these deep ‘off the
record’ mutterings were really attempts to hurt Cookson’s candidature, Brailsford still worried.

And the letter to Tiernan-Locke wasn’t a rumour.

The call from me was one he could have done without.

I believed there was a good chance Tiernan-Locke would be able to explain why his end-of-year blood values in 2012 seemed unnaturally elevated in relation to his 2013 values. Could it be that he
was over-trained and constantly run down in 2013 and this had led to unnaturally low blood values through his season with Sky? In other words, the low blood values of 2013 were mistakenly presumed
to be his baseline values.

The greater question, though, related to the very fact that there was such uncertainty haunting the team. Were Team Sky’s recruitment protocols sufficiently rigorous for a team with such
high ethical standards? Especially after Leinders? Brailsford continually refused to answer questions related to Tiernan-Locke, but it became clear that he wasn’t aware of the controversial
report in
L’ Equipe
after the Tour Méditerranéen victory. Fellow riders had all but openly accused Tiernan-Locke of cheating, but Team Sky hadn’t been plugged
into the grapevine.

‘Dave, what did you think when you read that report in
L’Equipe
that virtually accused Jonathan of doping?’

‘I’m not sure we saw that.’

‘It appeared after his win in the Tour du Haut Var.’

‘Don’t know whether we talked about it, but we were confident about the information we had from John [Herety] and Julien [Winn].’

Team Sky was also reassured by the fact that Garmin had tested him and were still trying to sign him. But if that testing by Garmin was deemed to be helpful, shouldn’t Sky have done its
own testing on Tiernan-Locke when he trained with the team in Tenerife?

It was hard to see what exactly Sky had learned from the mistake of Geert Leinders, what new measures had been implemented to better protect the interests of the team. This is not to say that
Tiernan-Locke had been involved in anything untoward, but given Sky’s position on doping, for them to have not known about the accusations made in
L’Equipe
was very
surprising.

Two aspects of the story bothered Brailsford. The overriding concern was that this story should not have been leaked and be in the public domain. Disappointment at this outcome wasn’t
lessened by the entire affair being a self-inflicted wound: the journalist that was going to undermine the UCI’s process and cast a slur on the team’s reputation was the one to whom
Team Sky had opened its doors. Thanks, mate. But, of course, he couldn’t say this.

The second was even harder to take. Tiernan-Locke’s story showed Sky still wasn’t getting its recruitment right. This wasn’t to say he had ever been involved in anything
unethical but the background checks should have been more thorough. They needed to have investigated the
L’Equipe
accusations. As for Sky’s monitoring of riders’ bio
passports, neither was that where it needed to be. How could the UCI’s medical panel have picked up an irregularity that the team had missed?

Brailsford and key personnel such as Kerrison and the lead doctor, Alan Farrell, spoke about what they could do. They discussed the possibility of setting up a panel of experts, working for the
team but independent of Brailsford and his management colleagues, to oversee recruitment and monitor riders’ bio passports. Chinks had been revealed in the team’s anti-doping armour
and, having failed to properly protect itself after the Leinders episode, Brailsford was determined to sort this out once and for all.