Jessica Varnish’s lawyer has described some of British Cycling’s attempts at transparency as “laughable.” Simon Fenton said that Varnish had received a copy of the organisation’s internal report into her allegations of sexism and bullying, but that extensive redaction made it at times impossible to interpret.
In December, Jess Varnish said that she was “shocked and upset” after it emerged that a British Cycling investigation had cleared Shane Sutton on eight out of nine charges of discriminatory conduct and bullying. She made a formal request to see the report and received a version earlier this month.
However, Fenton told The Guardian: “I’m not seeing full and frank disclosure. I am not seeing all of the information. We either haven’t seen the full report – or we have seen the full report and it was a very shoddy piece of work.”
British Cycling has employed the lawyers Bird & Bird to act on its behalf.
Fenton said:
“They have given us lots of information but said you can’t do anything with this because it is confidential. This whole assertion that they are being completely open and trying to resolve this with open hands is laughable.
“Some of the stuff they are giving us is so heavily redacted I don’t know what is going on. It looks like they were coming to a finding which suited British Cycling rather than coming to a decision based on all the information. I didn’t see any evidence of backing up or justifying the conclusions they came to.”
In a statement, British Cycling said they had, “complied with a subject access request from Jess Varnish,” and added: “The board put on record its sincere regret that this happened and are committed to ensuring the findings of the investigation will help the development of the organisation alongside the independent review into the culture of the World Class Programme.”
Fenton said that from reading what had been sent, he didn’t get the impression that there were sufficient performance reasons to remove Varnish.
“Normally when people are taken off the programme, it’s done in a structured way. This looked rushed. She wants to make sure no-one else goes through what she went through without any due process or warning.”
He said: “She is only 25. She is not past her best, she is at her peak. She wants to get back. If there really is a new broom at British Cycling and they are prepared to be open about this whole thing, then allowing her the right to appeal and getting back on the programme would be a good indication that they really are starting afresh.”
British Cycling’s new chairman, Jonathan Browing, and the UK Sport chief executive Liz Nicholl, will today give athletes in Manchester an update on the independent review into the governing body’s culture.
Olympic team pursuit gold medallist Elinor Barker told the London Evening Standard that her experience of the organisation has always been “pretty good,” but seemed to imply that she may have had occasional problems in the past by saying of the organisation’s culture: “No work place is perfect and you’ll always have friction with people, but it’s good now.”
She added: “I wouldn’t want to dismiss other people’s feelings or experiences but I wouldn’t say I ever felt bullied by British Cycling as a whole. I certainly never felt bullied and, from my side, I disagree with the idea of a culture of bullying.”
24 thoughts on “Jess Varnish wants to resume career but questions whether British Cycling is serious about reform”
Dear Jess,
Dear Jess,
Feel free to allow your performances on the track to do the talking.
Thanks,
Me
alansmurphy wrote:
Are only current team members allowed to question the setup? Just because you may think this is sour grapes (I don’t) doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a point. Nicole Cooke has been critical of the setup and she is one of the most successful British cyclists ever. Is her opinion ok?
Like it or not there are questions needing answers at BC. I don’t think it’s fair to make it ad hominem.
turboprannet wrote:
Reading Nicole Cookes autobiography now. Staggering stuff in there. I was critical/unsympathic to Jess’s cause before…after reading this my opinion has done a complete U turn. I advise anyone with an opinion on this affair to read it.
StoopidUserName wrote:
Are only current team members allowed to question the setup? Just because you may think this is sour grapes (I don’t) doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a point. Nicole Cooke has been critical of the setup and she is one of the most successful British cyclists ever. Is her opinion ok?
Like it or not there are questions needing answers at BC. I don’t think it’s fair to make it ad hominem.— turboprannetReading Nicole Cookes autobiography now. Staggering stuff in there. I was critical/unsympathic to Jess’s cause before…after reading this my opinion has done a complete U turn. I advise anyone with an opinion on this affair to read it.— alansmurphy
Add to this the news that a report that was summarised for UK Sport obsfuscated the truth in the full report, which they only recently received.
British Cycling basically are fucked. They either need to admit that there something seriously wrong and rotten at its core, or it will just fester and cycling as a sport in this country will suffer.
alansmurphy wrote:
Quite possibly the most foolish thing written about this.
Ush wrote:
Go on, I’ll bite, why is that the most foolish thing written?
Whatever your viewpoint on what has happened, JV’s argument can only look stronger, and BC’s removal of her from the programme look more stupid, if she is able to demonstrate that she is still a world class athlete and at her peak.
Hell, it would be unfair to expect JV to be at world class level when not on the programme, so I’d suggest being able to demonstrate the required potential to be back on the programme would be sufficient.
Personally speaking, I have no doubt BC need a good shake up, and Varnish’s treatment and removal from the programme was directly related to the comments she made publically.
My opinion on those public comment is complicated and not something I will bore you with now, but to summarise… if I publically slated my employer, my employer would terminate my contract. There is a clause in my contract that says just that… I signed it.
Why is there no such clause in the BC contracts? I am sure there is / was…
Surely if she turns up to
Surely if she turns up to training and then to National Championships and maybe wins them, then she can return?
For a bit of clarity, how
For a bit of clarity, how exactly does a particular time on a track event relate to bullying and sexism.
unconstituted wrote:
If you bully them really hard, ‘specially the sheilas, they do bonzer times. If they don’t, they weren’t gonna make it anyway, mate.
Although I feel a bit
Although I feel a bit disgruntled at JV and the subsequent publicity and fallout over all of this..
You have to admit that it’d be pretty hard for her mentally to be able to go out there and do it on your own in order to prove to BC that you’re deserving of a place over another, at best, pretty equally deserving cyclist.
I think this whole affair will have subsequently ended her British Team track career, where does she goes from here? Road cycling? I guess the transition could be made and her palmares should carry her into a pretty good bet for a road career ?
I just hope something good comes out of all this.
peted76 wrote:
Why though? Not being spiky – just curious.
turboprannet wrote:
At the risk of being flamed, I sympathise with the seeming lack of rider protection and obvious lack of management ‘insert any word here’. I do believe SS is some sort of Gene Hunt caricature out of his time.
But where we stand currently with BC disliked and in disarray, JV one of our brightest with very limited future options, one of our best coaches gone and what appears to be no changes in process to the way things worked in the program from before AND just to piss on our cycling chips some more, a lizard skinned legal firm prodding the PR fire further.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully lay blame at BC’s door here for years of mis-mangement and I wish JV the very best, but the whole thing stinks, no one comes out of this well to my mind
peted76 wrote:
I agree with zanf – BC is institutionally fucked. Running a broom through it and sweeping out anyone tied to the old regime probably isn’t the most productive action, but unless that happens there’ll be huge amounts of cycnicism that it’s changed, so I think that’s what’s necessary.
My membership is lapsing imminently; having gone back to (the more expensive) British Triathlon I doubt I’ll be signing up again.
One more thing: Cookson. Massively instrumental in getting BC to where it is now, and for that he gets roughly my kudos and disdain in equal measure. But having used that reputation to get the top seat at the UCI, the apparent lack of governance at BC should dent that reputation, particularly when he seems to have done bugger-all to justify another term. Off you fuck, Brian.
@Jimmy: is your employer a
@Jimmy: is your employer a valid analogy for BC?
Eg. does your employer have a whistleblowing facility whereby you could air discriminatory practices without going public?
Or does your employer take public money to further its mission to represent all participants in all disciplines in a particular field, so that the public is likely to be interested when they fail to do so?
Most of the focus in the past
Most of the focus in the past and here seems to be about Shane Sutton’s behaviour, but it does raise the issue of whether, “there were sufficient performance reasons to remove Varnish” – I’m a bit unclear on the connection between these two issues, and why the more tangible question of performance data seems to be getting consistently buried under questions concerning what consitutes distasteful phraseology.
beezus fufoon wrote:
You’ve nailed it. If BC produce the performance data this argument potentially goes away. However at this stage it is clear they don’t have that data because it never existed. To produce anything now would damage any credibility that BC have left (that’ll be none). They should eat humble pie and get her back in the squad where she belongs.
Legin wrote:
That’s one side of the argument, but it strikes me that in a society where gender inequality (or racism, bullying, etc.) is an ongoing issue, to purge every institution we found it in would leave us with precisely zero institutions…
Equally, the aim of sport in general is to discriminate according to rank – if there are only a handful of places on the team then some will lose out – it isn’t aiming to be an unconditionally egalitarian and inclusive democracy…
So the issue of whether an athlete’s mental toughness is perceived to be an problem is a separate issue to what constitutes fairness in a high pressured environment where team mates are competing against one another for places.
In other words, the question Jess Varnish should be asking is, “Is it cos I is black?”
beezus fufoon wrote:
Equally, the aim of sport in general is to discriminate according to rank – if there are only a handful of places on the team then some will lose out – it isn’t aiming to be an unconditionally egalitarian and inclusive democracy…
So the issue of whether an athlete’s mental toughness is perceived to be an problem is a separate issue to what constitutes fairness in a high pressured environment where team mates are competing against one another for places.
In other words, the question Jess Varnish should be asking is, “Is it cos I is black?”— beezus fufoon
That was the questiont that Varnish has been asking all the way through.
She asked to see the performance data that apparently showed she was going off the boil (& thats when she claims she was told to “go off and have a baby”) and was refused. Then on her appeal, was again refused to see the data.
Should we stop bothering to do anything then? That just seems a daft attitude. If an institution is rotten to the core then frankly it has to die no matter what. From that a new one must be organised with solid framework that stops such behaviours ever occurring again.
When you have the womans national coach delivering a jiffy bag full of drugs to Brad Wiggins on behalf of team sky, then spends the next week pacing in front of him, you have to ask how fucking salvagable BC is. This is the icing on top of the regular complaints I hear from people about the appointment of inappropriate and unqualified people within BC to manage lower cat racing in the UK.
With all thats going on recently, I dont think various people within BC care because their membership numbers are high so the subs money is rolling in.
To be frank, all of this is leaving a bad taste and I have very little hope of seeing any resolution or improvement any time soon. I may well withdraw my services from assisting lower cat racing and cancel my membership and maybe even advocate others to do the same.
zanf wrote:
I see, thanks…
so the point about sexism and bullying is that she lost out to other women soley on the basis that they were more willing to tolerate such treatment?
The question is how to do this – it seems to me that there are quite conflicting demands to be fair and inclusive while at the same time producing “cut-throat” winners.
beezus fufoon wrote:
The question is how to do this – it seems to me that there are quite conflicting demands to be fair and inclusive while at the same time producing “cut-throat” winners.— zanf
There might be hope… GB Swimming went through something similar with an earthy Aussie about ten years ago (Bill Sweetenham). He left and there were plenty of complaints about his methods, but the upwards trajectory he seemed to have set them on continued.
beezus fufoon wrote:
I disagree a bit there. She might have had it easier if she’d been a bloke: maybe they were picked on less (though Cav recounts being in tears) or maybe the environment was just more ‘blokey’, but in an organisation that takes public money (and that of 100,000+ paid-up members) the reasons for omitting someone on performance should be clear. That they aren’t is a dire indictment of the governance. This isn’t difficult – UK Athletics have had clear selection criteria for decades: not always popular, but clear.
With BC you don’t have that. Jess Varnish complains and it turns into a mess of discrimination and bullying claims, with successful former champs backing her up. Bullying and discrimination, nice. Mudslinging and confusion follows.
Three BMX spots out of six for the world champs are left unfilled for less-than-clear reasons. Unclear selection process, nice. Mudslinging and confusion follows.
Allowing inextricable ties with Team Sky to develop bites them on the arse when accusations about deliveries and TUEs that should solely be the business of a professional team sees BC staff and reputation dragged into the mire. Blurred lines between a public body and privately funded professional sports team, with a hint of drugs thrown in, nice. Mudslinging and confusion follows.
Some criticism and bitterness is inevitable given how high-profile BC and its athletes and coaches have become. Some historic complaints might not even be relevant anymore. But it’s suffering catastrophic reputational damage, so it requires something drastic to be seen to be done.
davel wrote:
Thanks Davel – that’s one of the clearest things I’ve read on the subject.
I thought jess varnish had
I thought jess varnish had finished with cycling and was opening a cafe
230548 wrote:
. Will you be naming all the partners in the venture or just Varnish?