Shane Sutton misses out on Cycling Australia top job - which goes to ex-GB coach, Simon Jones

Shane Sutton has missed out on the job of high performance director at Cycling Australia, with the position going instead to former British Cycling head coach, Simon Jones, currently head of innovation at Team Sky.

Sutton, who resigned from his position as technical director at the Great Britain Cycling Team in April last year after being accused of bullying and discrimination, had been widely tipped to be appointed to the position in his native country.

It has been vacant since Kevin Tabotta resigned in September in the wake of a disastrous Olympic Games in Rio in which Australia’s cyclists won just two medals – one silver and one bronze – while Team GB topped the medal table, just as they had done in Beijing and London.

Jones, who was head coach at British Cycling from 2003 to 2007, has worked Down Under before, holding several positions at the Western Australia Institute of Sport until returning to the UK in 2013 as head of endurance sports at the English Institute of Sport.

SBS reports that Sutton and Jones were the final two candidates for the position, although Cycling Australia did not confirm that.

The governing body’s chief executive, Nick Green, said: "It was a highly competitive recruitment and interview process which included a number of high-skilled candidates from a range of sports.

"With more than two decades of consistent success at the highest level, Simon brings a tremendous level of experience and knowledge into the organisation and we consider him an outstanding choice."

Jones said: "It's pretty simple – I'm only here for one reason and that's to win."

"I haven't come here to wear a t-shirt.

"I wouldn't have accepted the job if I didn't feel there was the quality of athletes, the quality of coaches or sufficient resources to do it.

"It is a challenge, an opportunity."

Jones was named coach of the year by UK Sport after the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004.

He made the headlines of the sports pages in 2009 when Mark Cavendish, in his autobiography Boy Racer, made it abundantly clear what he thought of Jones, whom he said had left him in tears on one occasion.

After one row with the coach, Cavendish called then British Cycling performance director, Sir Dave Brailsford, and told him: "I never want to have any contact with him again. I can say hello to him and perhaps be civil but I really can't stand the man.”

In his book, Cavendish added: "In the end, I didn't have to be civil: within a few weeks, the coaching team had 'restructured' and [Jones] left the federation."