"Brailsford fears being exposed as a spoofer"
The Irish journalist Team Sky chief Dave Brailsford clashed with at the Tour de France yesterday has said he believes Brailsford fears being exposed.
Barry Ryan said much of the marginal gains philosophy Brailsford formulated and espoused is not seen as new and radical now as it was at the beginning.
And he believed Brailsford was insecure about people questioning the approach to cycling that he has claimed was so new and effective.
Yesterday at a media event on the Tour de France rest day, Brailsford told Ryan, of cyclingnews, he wasn’t welcome.
He told Ryan he “writes shit” and concluded the conversation by telling the Irishman “stick it up your arse”.
Speaking on Newstalk’s Off the Ball radio show late yesterday, Barry Ryan said other journalists present were shocked “but not surprised on one level”.
He felt many in the media expected hostility from Brailsford, adding relations between Brailsford and the media had been deteriorating since 2013.
Ryan pinpointed the media’s questioning of Chris Froome’s performances as the turning point in the relationship.
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He added Brailsford specialised in management-speak and he believed the Team Sky boss feared he was being unmasked in some way.
“This is his greatest fear; that he’s being exposed as a spoofer essentially.
“Somebody pointed out to me earlier; either Brailsford is lying or he’s incompetent,” said Ryan in reference to Brailsford’s handling of the controversies the team has been mired in.
These included the jiffy bag delivered to Bradley Wiggins and his Team Sky doctor Richard Freeman in France in 2011 and also the leaking of the TUEs Wiggins had availed of during his glory days.
“Honestly I’m not sure which; does it hurt him more that people think he’s lying or does it hurt more that people think he’s incompetent?” he said of Brailsford.
“I think he has deep insecurities about him. I’ve always felt that his management speak was some sort of a veneer. It’s coming off now.”
And Ryan felt the notion that Brailsford had pioneered a new way in cycling, that he coined 'marginal gains', was now being questioned.
“Anybody who has a cursory knowledge of cycling would know that a hell of a lot of what he’s been calling marginal gains were being enacted in various (ways) for the last 50 or 60 years.
“Great Britain is a relatively new cycling country in certain respects; obviously there’s a tradition there too.
“But a lot of mainstream press would have come on board I think since the Beijing Olympics. And they were sort of happy to buy into the things that Brailsford had to say.
“But recent years have shown he really wasn’t telling us anything new.”
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