New GB Boss Offers Team Clean Slate

British Cycling’s new performance director Stephen Park tells CW he believes his outsider status can reap results

- Vern Pitt

The door is still open for former GB track sprinter Jess Varnish to rejoin the British Cycling squad, the organisation’s new performance director Stephen Park has said.

Varnish was dropped from the Olympic Podium Programme in April last year but Park’s openness to her return is indicative of how he is brining fresh eyes to BC’s well decorated Olympic programme.

In a wide-ranging interview with Cycling Weekly, Park, who joined British Cycling from the Royal Yachting Association at the end of May, says: “Yeah, I could see her return to the programme but I think that for me it’s pretty clear: if you can deliver the performances to be on the team, we want you on the team.”

Park has no history of management within cycling and says he has “no axe to grind” with Varnish. He adds: “If she walked in to the office to say I want to come back on the team would I say, ‘Great, here’s your shirt’? No. I’d say, ‘On what basis, and have you met the qualifying criteria? What performance have you got that merits your position?’ I’d say the same to you.”

Varnish is currently preparing to sue British Cycling over her removal from the programme but is known to be interested in returning to the team.

The 49-year-old Park, who is known as Sparky, has joined BC at a difficult time after over a year of controversy, including complaints of sexism and discrimination, a subsequent independent report into the culture of the organisation that was not terribly complimentary, and BC’s implication in an ongoing UK Anti Doping investigation into a package flown to Team Sky in France from BC’s Manchester HQ in 2011.