After a year in the culture of professional road cycling, and we all know the tarnished doping legacy that surrounds the Tour de France, have you had to change your philosophies. You used to have a zero-tolerance approach towards past doping cheats. But you spoke to Neil Stephens, about him becoming a potential SD, and he has been associated with past doping scandals. Does this indicate a change in your "zero-tolerance" thinking?
Well, I think when you look at the world of professional cycling… but look, first, you've got to break it down. There's no place for drugs in the sport and we like to think that, with a few other teams, we're at the forefront of trying to promote clean cycling. That philosophy will always stay. If we thought it wasn't possible then I'd be out. . But the whole point of our team is to try and demonstrate that it is possible to cycle clean and compete at the highest level. That stays at the root of everything we do. However, when you're trying to lift performance, and you look at the staffing side, if you want experience of professional cycling you have to go back a long way to find people over 40 who haven't been tainted in some way by many of cycling's past problems. And it seems to me and this is the one thing I've learnt: there's a general perception, and this is only an observation on my part, that certain people admitted to doping in the past who apologize and they generally get forgiven. People say, 'OK, fair enough, you've apologized.' I think there is a degree of humility and remorse that they show and people say, 'OK, fair enough, you can have a second chance.' And then there are other people who have done exactly the same thing and yet there are still disliked. There is still a negative towards them. That's interesting to observe. David Miller is now somebody who is generally considered to be a good guy who has come through a difficult time. He's liked again. But there are other individuals who don't get the same leeway. I don't know why…
But you have changed in that you are willing to hire people who might have been tainted by doping in the past?
I think it's very dependent on the individual and his history. You have your anti-doping policy and belief but you need to weigh it up and, actually, if the need of the team in performance was such and there was an individual that was generally considered in the 'positive' group, to excuse the pun, then he couldn't be ruled out
Is Neil in that positive group?
I think we've decided to stay as we are.
Was that because Neil was in that group?
I think it was overplayed to be honest.
And a David Miller type cyclist – would you accept him a rider considering your past zero-tolerance?
Well, I think we'll probably stick to our policies at the moment. I don't see us signing somebody who has come back after a doping ban. But maybe somebody who is a 45 year old Sports Director, who has held his hand up and said this is what I did in the past, and has since worked for clean teams for a long period of time and has vast experience that the team would benefit from, and there was no risk of him having an adverse impact on the team, that's a decision which is a bit more difficult to decide. It's on the margins.
There is a cloud over Michael Barry – following all the Landis allegations.
I think when we signed Michael Barry we took him on face value. You have to have experienced riders of that calibre in your team. We need experienced guys to be the key team-players. They need to help the leaders. They need to be wise to the peloton and how it all works. So you need them in the team. And Michael had a personality we liked. He came from a period of riding with Columbia [now T-Mobile] and we were very confident in Bob [Stapleton]'s set-up and that that was a very clean team and so we took him on that basis. We didn't have any information to suggest anything else. We thought he's being riding for a clean team and he's going to come to us and ride clean. We know that. So we took the decision on the merits and the facts that we had and thought it would be OK.
And now? Is this situation with Michael Barry likely to have more ramifications?
Who knows where these things will end up? But we'll base our decisions on facts when they appear. As it stands we support Michael and give him the benefit of the doubt. But if something comes out in the future then we'll review it as we go along. But all decisions will be based on the fact that anything we do should be proportional. We need to keep that in mind. But he has been such an asset to us. He's intelligent. He's a very, very strong opinion leader – but in a very calm and quiet way. He's got a lot of respect and people generally like his persona.
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