Allegations against Ineos’s David Rozman put Team Sky’s entire legacy under the microscope

In the soft-focus documentary which follows Team Sky during their hugely successful 2012 season, when Bradley Wiggins wins the Tour de France, we are told a story of what can be achieved when good clean British ingenuity takes on the world’s most morally bankrupt sport. Dave Brailsford’s colleagues swoon over the benefits of their team principal’s “marginal gains” ploy; colour-coded water bottles, standardised seat heights, a luxury bus: they all count.

In one clip, team chef Soren Kristiansen cheers his energy-conserving food programme while chopping some aubergines. In another, team physio Dan Guillemette lauds their “really good” pillows. “That’s the whole thing about marginal gains,” he says, after tucking in the sleep-enhancing sheets beneath a hypoallergenic mattress. “On their own they probably don’t make a great deal of difference, but add them together and that’s the difference between this team and our rivals.”

But what we later discovered was that the pillows and the power food were supplemented by a ploy to exploit grey areas in the rules, according to a 54-page report by a parliamentary select committee, which concluded that Bradley Wiggins used triamcinolone before major races to enhance performance, questioned Brailsford’s “winning clean” ethos and accused Team Sky of “crossing an ethical line” by cynically exploiting therapeutic use exemptions.

Team Sky, who later became Ineos, have always maintained that they stuck to the rules, and Wiggins has vehemently denied wrongdoing, as have his teammates who included fellow yellow jersey winners Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas. But fresh revelations over the past week have restored the spotlight on Sky’s era of success.

David Rozman, a long-term member of the team’s staff, left this year’s Tour de France mid-race after allegations by Germany TV station ARD that, in 2012, he exchanged messages with Mark Schmidt, a notorious German doping doctor who was convicted in 2021 of leading a sophisticated doping ring involving multiple cyclists and skiers.

Rozman is a team “carer” – essentially an assistant who carries out rider massages among other support duties – and worked closely with Wiggins and Froome during his career.

Some of the messages were published by The Times. They included a text, allegedly from Rozman to Schmidt, sent one month before the 2012 Tour de France won by Wiggins, which read: “Do you still have any of the stuff that Milram [Schmidt’s disgraced former team] used during the races? If so, can you bring it for the boys?”

Then, during the Tour, the day before Froome won on La Planche des Belle Filles and Wiggins claimed the yellow jersey, it is alleged that text messages reveal how Schmidt visited Team Sky’s hotel to meet Rozman.

In another message, Rozman sent Schmidt the contact details for a suspected drug dealer, based in Slovenia and codenamed Maestro Baltazar, who was allegedly in the business of supplying banned substances.

The International Testing Agency is investigating the case. Rozman is yet to speak publicly about the claims, and TheIndependent has approached him for comment.

Ineos Grenadiers said in a statement: “To date the team has received no evidence from any relevant authority. In response to the team’s request for information, the ITA has advised the team that it cannot share any further information, due to legal and confidentiality restrictions. Both David [Brailsford] and the team will of course cooperate with the ITA and any other authority. The team reiterates its zero-tolerance policy and is unable to comment further at this time.”

Brailsford was the genius hand pulling every string of Sky’s great era, giving every department unwavering focus, unity and direction, from medical and nutrition to strategy and performance, to the riders themselves on the road. He returned to the Tour de France this month after his brief foray into football with Manchester United, but refused to answer any questions on the Rozman issue, telling journalists: “No comment, and adding when they persisted: “F****** come on guys.”

Rozman may be cleared of wrongdoing. Or he may be found guilty and then simply be dismissed as a rogue operator, a bad apple in the bunch. After all, there are skeletons on most team buses in this sport, one where an eye-watering number of alleged, accused or admitted dopers are still employed among top teams.

But then you remember that culture, media and sport committee report, and the whistleblower who alleged Wiggins and several teammates were using corticosteroids out of competition “to lean down in preparation for major races”. You remember that so little of what went on can be examined because team doctor Richard Freeman destroyed his laptop with a blunt instrument and failed to keep adaquate records; you remember Geert Leinders, who worked with Team Sky in 2012, and who was later banned for life for multiple doping violations from 1996-2009 on a previous team. And now we have the unproven allegations against Rozman.

As a British cycling fan, it was hard not to feel smug watching their decade of dominance. This was a sport that the British had no hand in – road cycling didn’t begin in Britain, it wasn’t codified by the British, and it was rarely won by British riders, let alone a British team. Brailsford and Team Sky changed all that, taking a grip of the Tour de France peloton with the kind of carefully calibrated control that irked many of those in the sport’s heartlands.

Now it is hard not to feel disconsolate. Rozman may be exonerated, Team Sky reprieved. But the scrutiny on that era remains more than a decade later, like a knife scratching at the story’s edges, chipping away at what we thought we knew. The outcome of the ITA’s investigation could rewrite the legacy.