There was no wake for Shane Sutton at the National Cycling Centre in Manchester last week. At the start he was cycling’s performance director, next day he had stepped aside pending an investigation into allegations of sexism, and then he had accepted a settlement package.
Had there been a wake and everyone had been free to attend, it would have been like Jimmy McNulty’s when the murder detective decided to leave the Baltimore police department in the acclaimed TV series The Wire. Dave Brailsford, Sutton’s long-time former boss at British cycling, would have come to play the part of Jay Landsman, the one who delivered the eulogy.
What Landsman said of McNulty would be close to what fellow coaches would say of the Australian. “He [McNulty] was the black sheep, the permanent pariah. He asked no quarter of his bosses and none was given. He acknowledged no mistakes, he brooked no authority. He did what he wanted to do, he said what he wanted to say and in the end he gave you the clearances.
“Jimmy, I say this seriously, if I was lying there dead on some Baltimore street corner, I would want it to be you standing over me, catching the case. Brother, when you were good you were the best.”
Sutton saw things no one else could see. There is the often-told story of how he inspired Bradley Wiggins to get back out training during one of the champion’s down periods. His no-frills approach appealed to Wiggins, who has always been generous in his praise of his former coach.
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What has not been appreciated are the countless moments when Sutton’s gift for spotting the minutest defect helped riders to improve. He was a coaches’ coach. “Look,” he said one day at the velodrome, “Bradley’s gone back in the saddle, he needs to pull himself forward.” They looked at videos and some of the other coaches still could not see it.
Wiggins adjusted his posture ever so slightly, pulled himself forward and his times improved. Multiply that contribution and you have a significant contribution to 16 gold medals for Team GB at the last two Olympiads.
Sutton’s resignation did not come about because he coached badly but rather because he could not manage cleverly. When Brailsford and forensic psychiatrist Dr Steve Peters left the team in 2014, Sutton was promoted from coach to performance director. The change meant taking on management responsibilities and playing a game that acknowledged at least some need for diplomacy.
That did not play to his strengths and unlike Brailsford, Sutton did not have Peters in the background, liaising with dissatisfied riders, helping to rebuild bridges and making sure empathy had its place in the management style. When sprinter Jess Varnish expressed disappointment about losing her place in the team, blaming bad decisions by the coaches, Sutton should have said nothing.
Instead he could not hold himself back. “Jess is 25. She has been with us a long, long time. She qualified 17th in the match sprint [in London] so her chances of medalling in Rio were very, very slim if not none. And she hasn’t gone as quick as she went three years ago . . . There is no point carrying on and wasting UK Sport’s money on someone who is not going to medal.”
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You can admire the frankness but an athlete dropped from an Olympic programme deserves to be treated with more sensitivity. Varnish was understandably upset and from that moment, Sutton was in trouble. “I was told to go and have a baby and my bum was too big,” Varnish said in an interview with the Daily Mail.
Brailsford and Peters would have discussions about this, how to best tell a female athlete that she needed to lose weight without causing offence. Sutton, 58, had little time for these niceties. If your ass was too big it did not matter how you were told, you just had to be told. They would say it’s different telling a woman and he would say, “PC bullshit, mate.”
Sutton was like this about everything. You would say Chris Froome could not perform in the cold and he would dismiss the notion. “Froomey can’t perform in the cold because he’s convinced himself he can’t. It’s in his head.” Because Sutton understood the sport so well, you were never sure he was wrong.
Once Varnish accused him of being sexist, others came forward and complained about Sutton and the culture that exists within the team. Victoria Pendleton said she supported Varnish because she had suffered from bullying and isolation during her time in the team, though she did not point any finger directly at Sutton. Rebecca Romero said she could “quite well imagine those comments coming out of Shane Sutton’s mouth”.
Wendy Houvenaghel described Sutton as “a narcissistic little bully” and the six-time paralympic gold medalist Darren Kenny accused the former coach of referring to paralympians as “gimps and wobblies”. Sutton denied the allegations, which will all be investigated.
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Many warm to Sutton’s salt-of-the-earth style. He said what he felt needed to be said and felt no need to run it through the filter of political correctness.
The thing about Sutton’s maverick nature was that it worked at both ends of the spectrum. He was not a nine-to-five man, he would not say he was taking his girlfriend out to dinner if some rider needed his attention.
When he saw Pendleton’s endorsement of Varnish’s criticism, he wondered that the two-time Olympic gold medallist had not mentioned his decorating her house until three in the morning.
In Sutton’s absence, British Cycling will be a more politically correct place. There will be less madness. There will be fewer swear words. And there will be fewer medals. Because, like McNulty, when Sutton was good he was the best.