Froome out of Tirreno

RichN95 wrote:

Her agenda is basically hitting back at and settling scores with anyone who didn't bow to her and her father's every whim and treat her like a superstar.

I had a conversation with someone high up in Welsh sport when they had a bit too much to drink at a Welsh Hockey function - the person was absolutely delighted when she retired. Y.

Well off topic here but I am not going to stick it on a new thread.

Glad that you met someone who told you something when he was drunk and you felt it worth sharing.

If you want a list of people in cycling administration who are delighted that Nicole and her father are not involved in the sport I am sure I could populate it far more effectively than yourself. Where to start ?

How about the Coach who thought it appropriate to take a 14 year old girl away in a mixed team of youth age riders and have a collection of porno magazines in his car. Or driving side by side with another Welsh team car, not on a dual carrigeway, with the riders passing drinks between the cars at over 60 miles per hour and then going each side of central traffic calming measures. Would you want your child in that car, speeding on the wrong side of the road ? I will stop. I am keeping the most extreme examples of inappropriate behaviour away from the board. Yes, I found it astonishing that an organisation funding his activity from the public purse considered it entirely acceptable to keep this person on. When I didn't get the response I needed from Welsh Cycling I went over their heads. Yes, I was a complete pain. Yes, I got the action that was needed. I made change happen.

I am sure those who were entirely happy with, running the sport they wanted to run it, and spending public money just as they would like to, found me a big problem. Financial impropriety abounds in many sports that are away from the spotlight. Again, I am not sharing . Let's tidy that one up with a factual state of play to give a measure of some of the people I was dealing with. Welsh Cycling has gone through more than enough CEO's in the last 15 years. I was trying to sort out a problem with an event Nicole was meant to be taking part in. I had been trying to get hold of the CEO for two days. I called again. I am told by one member of staff, on the phone, that the CEO is not in. Ten minutes later I receive a call. It is another member of the Welsh Cycling staff ringing me to tell me he has made an excuse to go outside and he is ringing me from the car-park. The CEO is in and has been in all the time but he has told everyone to tell you he is not there. The person who had answered my call 5 minutes before was lying to me. I drove over and saw the CEO. He was quite shocked when I turned up.

As to wanting her to be treated like a superstar, I never even wanted her to get the treatment a bloke would get if they achieved what she achieved, only ever just some modest way towards it. But I am confident that can look different to someone who really does have an agenda. One of the National Championships at the Celtic Manor used Nicole being the Welsh Star to extract sponsorship from the Celtic Manor and access public funds from the Welsh Assembly Government. With all the money that came in they were able to hire a company to do a TV program, hire motorbikes and cameramen and a helicopter to do live broadcast to a big screen, make it all super and put on a great prize list. Best ever probably for a British Champs. Of course all that was in place provided you were a bloke. For the women's race there was no big screen, no helicopter, no TV and obviously as girlies they get smaller prizes. Again, I didn't get the reaction from Welsh Cycling that they thought there was anything wrong with such sexism, so I contacted a couple of the sponsors. Needless to say they were horrified, particularly the Welsh Assembly government, who thought they were pushing the boat out big style to back their Welsh World Cup winner, not reinforce Neanderthal behaviour patterns. We negotiated. They could only afford 1 day's hire of all the kit. OK so have both races son one day. It was impossible to put both races on one day. I made suggestions about how they could do that. No. Every suggestions was turned down. Entirely impossible. As a sop, the company converting the coverage to TV would also take some video footage from a single motorbike from the women's race and put it into a program to be broadcast post the event.

More - I could write my own book, but I have no intention of doing so. This is wrapping up.

Rich I have no idea how you would act if it was your daughter. Being labelled a pain by someone who has had too much alcohol at a dinner - I'll live with that every time. A couple of years later, the National Championships were arranged on one day and have been ever since. Brain Cookson - credit to him - I had pointed out to him on many occasions that it was crazy that British Cycling promoted National Championships with such disparity in the prize money and when he promoted the event at Pendle in 2010 he was delighted to write to me and tell me that the winners would get equal amounts. I am not sure Emma Pooley would have been aware of the "trouble" I created pressing for that, but I am very pleased she got the same as Geriant Thomas that year and things changed. The coverage - the TV company took the extra money for the job and the women's race made 60 seconds to go out with a longer men's road race program. There is another long tale about getting that in front of the Sky Director of TV Sport so that now they treat the girls with respect and do a proper program, but that is not for here.

I will finish by saying I too was at a sporting dinner last year. I was sat alongside an Ex Wales Rugby international who now works for the Welsh Assembly Government. He, like myself, was sober. Things have moved on in Cycling in the last 15 years both at British and a Welsh level. I hear Welsh Cycling is doing wonders right now, but we don't have to go back more than 2-3 years to find evidence of chaos at the Board of Welsh Cycling making its way onto a cycling forum with an attempted coup reminiscent of the BCF at the time of Doyle and Emerson. We mused - Sport Wales have thrown public money and resource at Welsh Cycling for many years, a whole variety of management models had been tried but the governance of the sport had remained an impervious problem, holding back the development of the sport in Wales. I look and see many changes. I look and see many who made them happen, I am glad Nicole and I contributed. Look and you will find plenty of people who have decent standards and want to make a positive change. I was grateful to the individual at Welsh Cycling who had the nerve to go out into the car park and ring me and tell me what was going on. He enabled change.

I'll apologise in advance, I may well not revisit this forum to deal with replies. I am enjoying a life away from the politics of sports administrators. I only came here when I was informed of the weird post about the book in the autobiographies thread.

Bo Duke wrote:

Well done mate, as we know it's far, far easier to ignore these issues than get stuck in and see it through.

+1, learnt a lot of things that I hadn't heard before. Cooke was a heavyweight rider for years, long before these new clean-cut, pr-schooled, well-funded, automons started representing this country.

Am 100% certain that there a number of totally corrupt and inept individuals living off public funds with little accountability, not to mention the morons that will do their dirty bidding.

Nicole Cooke is a pure racer with a palmares to prove it.

No matter if the hierarchy dislike her, or if the sleazy types dislike her, the pure fans respect her and that's what matters more.

Read the Guardian article - perfectly reasonable - I think 90% of the public would find it very odd that an athlete can get dispensation to use a banned substance because of illness and then win the race. Anyone would wonder just how ill that person was and even if they accepted it was genuine it's obvious that such a system is wide open for abuse. Yes she used the example of Froome and Sky - it's a British newspaper and she is British plus he is a Tour winner - it'd be odd if she used an example of a Lithuanian semi-pro to illustrate the point.

As for Cooke and her dad's personalities - yes no doubt they were a bit pushy - apologies to her dad here but I have my own stories relayed first hand from people in cycling that suggest as much. At the same time these same people (not going to say who because what happens at a cafe stop stays at a cafe stop) had a lot of respect for them and less for British Cycling and the way it has acted over Cooke's career. There are still a lot of people in sport who just don't respect female competition and the Cookes probably needed an argumentative, stubborn, competitive and even aggressive streak to get what they did - good on them for that even if it upset a few committee members in Welsh sport.

I think its good that a guy is prepared to stick his hand in the snake pit and attempt to pit the record straight without the filter of "PR" and all the good its done for the world