Former BC and UCI president says responsibility lies with British Cycling chair Frank Slevin to pull governing body from the doldrums in 2023
Brian Cookson, the former president of both British Cycling and the Union Cycliste Internationale, has spoken out once more on the difficulties faced by British Cycling last year.
At the end of a tough 2022 for the UK sport’s governing body with a string of controversies over trans rights, the Queen’s funeral and its sponsorship deal with Shell, it ended without a permanent CEO after former boss Brian Facer stepped down. To add to the problems, caretaker boss Danielle Every is also heading for the exit after taking a sideways move to UK football refereeing organisation PGMOL.
Writing in a blog post on his website last week, Cookson said BC has been continually “damaged by outsiders” in what he described as a “brain drain” and “hollowing out of the organisation”.
Speaking to CW, Cookson added that he still believes British Cycling’s biggest issue is the lack of cycling knowledge among its senior leadership team.
“If you look back at the whole process that’s gone on since 2017 when Frank Slevin was appointed, since the hollowing out of the organisation which was started by Julie Harrington, all of the things that have come up have been damaging,” Cookson said.
“It’s interesting when you think about it, that the problems that were identified were all problems within the Great Britain Cycling team.
“Yet somehow, that’s been converted into a clearing out over the years of [the whole organisation], all the longstanding expertise, the longserving staff members and the people who very much knew about cycling and contributed to it for so many years,” he added. “So I don’t really understand why there was the need for that drastic clear-out and to replace it all with people who have perhaps not got that depth of knowledge within the sport. It was clearly very unnecessary.”
However, seven of the 11 members of the board were either elected or appointed directly. Plus, of the four remaining independent board members, three were members of BC before joining the board.
From the top
Cookson laid much of his criticism at the foot of Slevin, saying leadership needed to come from the top of the organisation. He added: “I’ve never seen an interview with the chair, I see occasional statements from him when he’s hectoring the UCI, which is a massive misunderstanding of how international diplomacy works.”
In his blog post, Cookson, who organises the Lancaster Grand Prix, said that he still feels the current BC leadership has “no
