British Cycling and UK Sport have commissioned an independent review into relations between Team Sky and the British Olympic setup, seeking to examine the interaction between the two.
Deloitte are scheduled to complete the review by this summer and will ascertain if there performance targets are being met, how the relationship between the two works and if there are any risks because of the closeness of the two projects.
Team Sky principal Dave Brailsford is also the performance director at British Cycling, and conceded over the winter that he had to be very careful to keep the two roles separate, and also to ensure that he would be able to meet the targets for both.
As the Guardian points out, Shane Sutton is head coach for both, while overlaps also exist for Olympic team psychiatrist and senior manager, Dr Steve Peters, who is head of medical with Team Sky, track endurance coach Dan Hunt, who is race coach for Team Sky, and former pro Max Sciandri, who is head of the British Cycling academy and sports director/coach for the team.
Two possible risks with the proximity of the two projects are that the personnel involved could be spread too thin, thus being able to give too little of their time to the athletes in question, or that there could be a perceived or actual bias when it comes to selecting riders for Olympic squads.
Brailsford was asked at the world track championships if he was able to focus fully on the track element of things, given that Team Sky is in its infancy and requiring a lot of his time. He said that it wasn’t an issue, and that he was confident that the two projects could work side by side.
Russell Langley, the head of communication at UK Sport, said that the review was not being set up with any blame or preconceived opinion in mind. “It is not being done from any negative angle, but to ensure that both programmes are working well and can deliver what they need to,” he said.
Team Sky took what is probably its biggest success to date on Saturday when Bradley Wiggins won the opening time trial of the Giro d’Italia and became only the second Briton in history to don the Maglia Rosa of race leadership.
He lost the jersey yesterday when he was delayed in a crash in the closing stages, but remains in overall contention.