Exactly why their former doctor ordered a batch of testosterone that was delivered to their Manchester HQ remains unexplained but nothing, it seems, can derail Team Sky.
While weeks of preliminary legal argument were preventing lawyers from the General Medical Council interrogating the elusive Dr Richard Freeman in Manchester last month, having levelled the allegation that the banned substance was ordered to enhance the performance of an athlete, Sir Dave Brailsford and his senior riders were persuading Britain’s richest man to replace Sky as their new owner.
It was, sources claim, a brilliantly executed seduction that involved Geraint Thomas taking Sir Jim Ratcliffe for a spin on the climbs out of Monaco.
Ratcliffe and his son are keen cyclists, we are told. And they obviously enjoyed themselves, with the announcement Team Sky will become Team Ineos next season — as first revealed by Sportsmail — said to be imminent.
As chairman and founder of a petrochemicals giant that has made him £21billion, Ratcliffe is no stranger to controversy.
Last month he attacked the government’s fracking policy on behalf of Ineos and last year it emerged he was moving to Monaco’s tax haven. Two months earlier he was knighted by the Queen for ‘services to business and investment’.
Within his own team at Ineos, concerns were apparently raised. John Mayock heads up the sports division at the Ineos offices in London and one imagines the former Olympic middle-distance runner would have been concerned by the whiff of scandal that has dogged Brailsford and his all-conquering cyclists of late. Mayock was unavailable for comment.
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