British Cycling were warned about blurred relationship with Team Sky in 2011

The 2011 Deloitte report commissioned by British Cycling (BC) and UK Sport to look into British Cycling’s relationship with Team Sky is reported to have flagged as potential problems a “lack of clarity" regarding dual roles and the reputational risk posed by any doping scandal at Team Sky.

The Telegraph reports that the findings were among the documentary evidence which has recently been submitted to the Culture Media and Sport Select Committee.

The report, entitled ‘The Impact of Team Sky on British Cycling’s World Class Performance Programme’ was supposed to ensure that any significant risks to UK Sport’s Lottery-funded Cycling World Class Performance Programme were identified and managed.

Although it concluded that there were no major risks, clarity of roles and responsibilities and clarity in financial accounting were cited as being areas of concern.

These issues have been to the fore in recent weeks as details have emerged about the package delivered to Team Sky at the 2011 Critérium du Dauphiné.

Then-British Cycling employee Simon Cope travelled 900 miles carrying what is said to have been medicine destined for Sir Bradley Wiggins.

Cope flew from Manchester to Geneva at the request of Team Sky, and handed a 'Jiffy bag envelope' to the team's doctor, Richard Freeman. The expense claim made by Cope, which came to almost £600, was reimbursed to British Cycling by Team Sky.

Writing in The Guardian last week, Nicole Cooke asked why it was deemed acceptable to use the publicly funded national women’s team road manager as a courier.

The Deloitte report also made reference to “resentment amongst some riders and BC staff who did not have Team Sky roles/contracts,” and this is something that could be perceived in Cooke, a former world and Olympic champion who clearly feels her preparation for that year’s world championships suffered.

She said that throughout early 2011 she had been attempting to get Cope to run a single training camp for the women riders he was meant to be managing and that when he agreed, the plan was rejected by Dave Brailsford and Shane Sutton – “the same pair who apparently think it fine to fly a courier with a €10 med 1,000 miles across Europe.”

Cooke says a pertinent question is whether anyone can “quantify the impact Cope’s moonlighting away from his publicly funded role, and the failure to conduct a single camp for the British women’s road team he was meant to manage, had on our failure in Copenhagen?”