Dave Brailsford

British Cycling’s performance director and Sky Pro Cycling’s Team Principal, Sir Dave Brailsford, has enjoyed another year of lavish success, beginning the year with the award of a knighthood, winning a second Tour de France, this time with Chris Froome, and sending a young squad to the UCI World Track Championships in Minsk to watch them top the medal table. Pass the gravy, Dave.

Recent weeks have been less kind to Brailsford, and illustrate the pressures on a man who has rightly established his team as a standard bearer for clean cycling. Jonathan Tiernan-Locke looks set to face disciplinary proceedings following biological passport irregularities,and Brailsford’s team is mentioned in every news article, despite the fact that Tiernan-Locke will defend himself from accusations relating to a period before he joined Team Sky. Similarly, Mick Rogers’ positive test for Clenbuturol was given at the end of a season with Saxo-Tinkoff, but it is pictures of the Australian in Sky kit that illustrate most of the coverage.

What then to ask Sir Dave between mouthfuls of mince pie? Which of the two Tour victories did he enjoy most? Wiggins’ dull but unerringly efficient triumph in 2012? Or Froome’s spectacular victory this year, when the wheels never seemed far from falling off the Sky waggon? Is Dani King the heiress to Queen Victoria Pendleton’s sprint throne? And are outrageous slurs part and parcel of running a clean team in a contaminated sport that refuses to purge itself of those who have harmed it?