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Tiernan Locke
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A TEAM SKY cyclist has received a letter from the sport’s governing body, Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), asking him to explain suspect blood values dating back to September 2012, three months before he joined the world’s No 1 team. Jonathan Tiernan-Locke was selected to ride for Great Britain in today’s world championship road race in Florence but pulled out of the team on Thursday, citing lack of form.

Contacted in Florence, Sir Dave Brailsford, Team Sky’s principal, declined to comment yesterday. “I’m not in a position to say anything at this point.” Tiernan-Locke, 28, could not be contacted and did not respond to a message left on his voicemail. This is the first time any Team Sky rider has been the subject of a doping investigation.

According to Sunday Times sources, Tiernan-Locke’s problem arises from variations in his biological passport data, which have been irregular enough to cause the UCI authorities to begin the investigation process.

The cyclist born in Devon has three weeks from the time he received the letter to offer an explanation for the variations in his blood values. His response will then be assessed by the same three-man panel of experts that made the original decision to investigate. If they are not satisfied by the rider’s response, they will pass the case to a panel of 11 experts who will decide whether the rider should be disciplined.

Team Sky have been in the vanguard of the fight against doping in cycling and operate a “zero tolerance” policy against anyone with a doping conviction or known to have been involved in doping. Last year the team’s reputation was damaged by the news that they had employed Geert Leinders, a Belgian doctor, not knowing that he had a shady past. He is now fighting charges that he had been involved in doping at the Dutch Rabobank team. There is no suggestion that Leinders was involved in doping at Team Sky but the team’s initial policy had been against employing doctors from within professional cycling. Late last year two members of Sky’s backroom team, Steven de Jongh and Bobby Julich, admitted past involvement in doping and had to leave the team.

The irony for Team Sky is that according to what The Sunday Times has learnt, Tiernan-Locke’s suspicious values relate to the final four months of last year when he was riding for Endura, a UCI Continental team. He has performed disappointingly for Team Sky and been unable to reproduce the form that won him a contract.

Because Endura competed at the lower Continental level, theirs riders were not part of the biological passport data system. Only when Tiernan-Locke had his greatest victory, in last season’s Tour of Britain, did he start having regular blood tests. Values recorded in the four months before the end of 2012 were not deemed sufficiently suspicious to trigger an investigation but since joining Team Sky in January, Tiernan-Locke has been routinely blood-tested.

This year’s tests gave the authorities the information to establish what they believe to be the rider’s normal values and they are now asking him to explain the higher-than-normal values from his pre-Sky days. For Tiernan-Locke this is not the first time he has had to answer questions related to suspicions of doping. At the start of last season his form in winning both the Tour du Haut Var (one stage win and overall) and the Tour Mediterranean (two stage wins and overall) aroused suspicion — and not just on social networking sites. The French sports newspaper L’Equipe wrote: “Are we in the presence of a champion or a chimera? Tiernan-Locke can only be one or the other to win five races in a row. He’s part of a team from the third division, a category where the riders don’t have to submit to biological monitoring, via the blood passport programme of the Union Cycliste Internationale.”

That changed when Tiernan-Locke became part of Team Sky. Now the custodians of the blood passport programme will decide if the British rider is a champion or a chimera.

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A short tweet from a 28-year-old British cyclist on Thursday didn’t seem much out of the ordinary. “Was sorry I had to withdraw from the worlds line up, just don’t have the form to help the lads there. Good luck to team GB though,” wrote Jonathan Tiernan-Locke of his decision to pull out of the world championship road race in Italy, which will be held today. He was replaced by fellow Team Sky rider Luke Rowe and the world moved on, unaware of what was happening beneath the surface.

Shortly before informing his fans of his non-participation in the world road race, Tiernan-Locke received a letter from the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) requesting him to explain suspicious numbers in his blood values over the past 12 months. The UCI only instigates this kind of investigation against a rider when it believes the divergence in blood values is too great to ignore.

Tiernan-Locke has three weeks to respond and the case will then be reconsidered in the light of his response. The case could then be passed to 11 UCI experts who would determine whether Tiernan-Locke should be punished. He has never previously been in trouble for doping and he becomes the first Team Sky rider to be investigated by those who manage UCI’s biological passport system.

Though he must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, Tiernan-Locke now finds himself in the position of having to establish his innocence.

For Team Sky this controversy is both embarrassing and damaging. With their “zero tolerance” policy on doping, which means no one with any kind of doping past can work with the team, Sky have taken the moral high ground in professional cycling. This hasn’t made them the most popular team in the peloton.

Contacted in Florence yesterday, Sir Dave Brailsford, the principal of Team Sky, declined to comment on the Tiernan-Locke case. “I’m not in a position to say anything at this point.”

Tiernan-Locke did not return a call or respond to a message on his voicemail. Though no one at Team Sky would comment publicly, there is deep disappointment among their members and frustration that the values that have aroused UCI suspicion were recorded in the months before Tiernan-Locke joined the team.

For years the Plymouth-born Tiernan-Locke seemed destined to be one of those peripheral figures in cycling who had some talent but not the physical robustness to be a success at the elite World Tour level. He started as a mountain bike racer and didn’t switch to the road until he was 18. Soon he had progressed from a category four amateur to category one, and at 21 he was selected for the Great Britain U-23 team.

But ill-health caused him to lose his form and he was diagnosed with Epstein-Barr virus. At that point he enrolled at the University of the West of England in Bristol, where he spent three years studying product design. After university in 2009, he returned to serious cycling and joined the Plowman Craven-Madison team. They folded in mid-season and he found a job in a bike shop.

In 2010, at age 26, he joined the Rapha Condor-Sharp team and finally began to achieve some decent results, most notably finishing fifth overall in the 2011 Tour of Britain. By 2012 he had moved to Endura and was ready to take a giant step forward. In the early season Tour du Haut Var and Tour Mediterranean his form was astonishing as he beat opponents ranked far higher to win both races. As well as the general classification, he won a stage of Haut Var and two stages in the Tour Mediterranean. His victories aroused considerable controversy.

Perhaps the most strident sceptic was the L’Equipe journalist who covered those two races. After saying he was either a “champion or a chimera”, the writer asked: “What do his peers think? With the microphone open, not much. But with the tape recorder turned off, they express some deep doubts.”

“It’s inevitable when someone wins so much,” said the former Tour de France winner Stephen Roche, who had ridden with Locke at a training camp in Mallorca that winter. “But this isn’t a two-faced bastard, not a malicious guy, so I can’t begin to imagine that he has cheated. Even so, I’m crossing my fingers.”

Tiernan-Locke’s form in those early season races, after his fifth place in the Tour of Britain the previous season, attracted the interest of some of the best teams on the elite World Tour. Team Sky and the US-back Garmin team were especially keen to sign him. Tiernan-Locke went for a week’s training with the Sky team in Tenerife and on March 26 last year he had blood and physiological testing with the Garmin operation.

Those tests showed his blood values were unremarkable and that his physiological values were nothing special. From the tests, it was clear he had ability but not the kind to suggest he would be winning a lot of races.

But then in July, Tiernan-Locke won two stages and the general classification at the Tour Alsace and from there, he went on to become the first home rider to win the modern-day Tour of Britain.

That victory was soon followed by the news that he would ride for Team Sky in 2013, and with that came regular blood testing for the rider. Brailsford would have spoken with John Herety, who worked with Tiernan-Locke at Rapha Condor, and Julian Winn who was director sportif at Endura when the rider was blazing a trail in the south of France early last season. It is believed they harboured no doubts about Tiernan-Locke’s ethics.

Sky were also aware that the rider was blood-tested by Garmin and that the American team were satisfied by what they found. Garmin were still interested in signing Tiernan-Locke after the March 26 blood tests last year.

Seemingly, Brailsford and his management team did not give much weight or were not aware of the doubts expressed in L’Equipe when that paper reported on Tiernan-Locke.

But for a team so opposed to doping and averse to being associated with any rider or staff member accused of doping, it might be considered surprising that they signed the British rider. The team had already been through the mill with Dr Geert Leinders, the Belgian doctor who arrived in Manchester in October 2010 for an interview with Team Sky. He was interviewed by Dr Steve Peters and Dr Richard Freeman, two of its backroom staff. “I could have grilled him and grilled but when someone assures you that he has not been involved in doping, that doesn’t seem appropriate,” Peters subsequently said.

But Sky’s recruitment process wasn’t sufficiently rigorous and Leinders’ doping past would resurface and temporarily damage the team’s reputation.

“As the person responsible for bringing him in,” Brailsford said earlier this year, “I thought maybe I should resign. I got it wrong and if the board had wanted me to step down, I would have.”

Now Brailsford and Team Sky must wait to see if their recruitment processes have again been deficient. What the UCI is looking at are the blood values that were recorded during and immediately after Tiernan-Locke’s Tour of Britain victory last year and which they now suspect are not commensurate with the values recorded during this year with Team Sky.

People inside Team Sky point to Tiernan-Locke’s 2013 performances, which have been disappointing. The man who recorded nine significant victories last season hasn’t had one decent result this season. He has not coped well with the training load. “I don’t feel like I’ve got the best out of myself this year,” he said last month. “I already feel like the best part of the season has gone and though I’ve made myself useful at races, for me personally it’s been disappointing.”

He envisaged switching his focus from stage racing. “I should be developing along the lines of a one-day rider, something which I know I can do,” he said. In 2012 Tiernan-Locke won four stage races.

Before he gets the chance to develop his potential for one-day racing, Tiernan-Locke has to convince the UCI there is a plausible explanation for his suspicious blood values.