The Shane Sutton I know: blunt, brutal and a bag of nervous energy

Alasdair Fotheringham has had a professional relationship with Sutton, who quit as British Cycling's technical director amid sexism and discrimination claims, for a long time. Here he recounts his experiences

Shane Sutton has resigned as British Cycling's technical director (Getty)

In a world of high-budget sport where pr spin and ‘controlling the narrative’ have now become objectives sometimes as important as the results themselves, Shane Sutton - sometimes for better, sometimes, as has become dramatically obvious this week, for worse - has always been one to speak his mind.

“He is a no-nonsense, fantastic motivator, but he calls a spade a spade, too,” one former British professional rider who raced with Sutton in the 1980s and who knows him well, tells The Independent. “His ability to read a race is brilliant, particularly in terms of track cycling. I don’t think there’s a better person for track craft out there.”

I have interviewed Sutton on several occasions down the years and the two words that he has always brought to my mind is “nervous” and “energy”. During the 2008 Olympics, when the adrenalin and tension were leaving British staff exhilarated but on the edge of exhaustion, Sutton would ride for an hour and a half every day, kicking off at 6am, from the British team hotel to the Beijing velodrome.

In those years, when in search of a quote I could almost always find him on sucking nervously on a cigarette between races (he has since stopped smoking) outside whichever velodrome the British team were racing in. Between drags Sutton would discuss and analyse the race and riders inside from every possible angle. The former British professional rider agrees: “He can watch a four minute team pursuit, and his eye for detail is second to none.”

Sir Chris Hoy, himself no slouch at analysing a track race down to the last pedalstroke, once described Sutton to The Guardian as “scarily perceptive.”

His memory for detail is elephantine, and his communication style never less than direct. In Richard Moore’s Sky’s The Limit, Sutton - when working for Team Sky - is described as a “wiry, rugged, edgy, fidgety.” During his time with the team, he was “the joker to to Brailsford’s - with his background in business and his MBA - straight man. They are as much a double act as Brian Clough and Peter Taylor, the legendary football management team. And similarly lost without each other.” Asked by Moore if he had brought champagne to celebrate the first team Sky race in 2010, Sutton’s answer was a typically blunt “nah, none of that bullshit”.

Speaking without calculating has got Sutton into trouble before this week. In 2009 he told the BBC the names of four riders (including Bradley Wiggins) who had agreed to join Sky in 2010.

Sir Dave Brailsford and Sutton pictured in 2013 (Getty)

Sutton was obviously not scared of confrontation. He was sent out by Sky mid-race during their troubled 2011 Vuelta a España. His mission, he told me when I ran into him unexpectedly at a second-week start, was “to start banging my fist on the table”.

Sutton was not lacking an ability for self-criticism, though, once telling The Independent in 2014 after an uneven period for the track squad: “I need to freshen up, that’s for sure…. I need a new challenge – the role of head coach is quite stale now in the sense that I have been head coach a long time.”

He is the last of the 2008 Beijing Games ‘Gang of Four’, the inner circle of team management at British Cycling who oversaw the gold medals gold rush, to part ways with British Cycling and in the countdown to the 2016 Olympics to boot. As such, Sutton’s resignation marks the abrupt exit from power of one of UK sport's most significant figures of recent years. And after this week, a controversial one as well.