It's all going swimmingly at BC.
Cookson taking a "no comment" approach, it does seem to suit him better than when he does open his mouth.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/39037374
I'm currently reading "The Breakaway" and Cookson comes out as a nice-but-ineffective BC president.
This quote from UK Sport's Chief Exec is an amazing piece of arse-covering: "It's fair to say that the high-performance system here is pretty male-dominated. There aren't very many female coaches and there's an opportunity to address that in future, and to get a better balance to support athletes in a way that athletes of today want to be supported." They've had nearly two decades to address that and have failed to do so at every turn. History says they can't be trusted to do it themselves, so much as I dislike such measures, I feel it's time to attach some clear equality strings (athlete, coach and management) to their funding and remit.
I don't have a lot of sympathy for UKSport, they should quit whinging after the event and examine their own role in funding a body with potentially lapse governance. They're pretty quick to ruin athletes lives by withdrawing funding and being pretty hard nosed about it and fund the those producing medals no matter what or how; pathetic hypocrites.
Actually, if UKSport had been funding those producing medals, I think Cooke might have been a lot less unhappy! During her time, she seemed to get funding intermittently, grudgingly and often with attempts to control her, despite winning medals at a time when the consistently better-funded blessed men and few women weren't. When she tried to get UK Sport to intervene, they initially refused and then were pretty ineffective. So no, I've little sympathy for UKSport and don't really expect this review to fix things... but I'd love to be surprised.
Back to the topic: Shane Sutton. In "The Breakaway" so far, he seems to be a loose cannon, initially helpful, although possibly slightly Machiavellian, but then later unpredictable and often disrespectful or disruptive, possibly when he realises that no-one in management is going to act on complaints against him in any meaningful way.
Anyone grumbling that Cooke's written evidence to the select committee was short on detail and dates should take a look in the book. It's all there and it seems like she's kept quite an archive of letters, emails and so on, with her solicitor getting involved depressingly early on.
