David Brailsford's first meeting with the press since appearing in front of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee in December was always going to be a tense affair, and so it turned out to be with questions turning to recent remarks from his team leader Chris Froome and the head of UK Anti-Doping.
As the assembled journalists descended on the hastily arranged interview area of the Team Sky hotel in Mallorca, Brailsford first tried to get some semblance of order; meticulously laying out each of the audio recorders in two neat lines before questioning could begin.
After calling the comments of UK Anti-Doping chairman David Kenworthy extraordinary, Brailsford went on to say that the recent scandal surrounding Team Sky hasn't damaged his relationship with Chris Froome, despite Froome's resistance in backing Brailsford in an interview last week.
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"Our communication is about how we're going to win the Tour again," Brailsford told the media. "We talk a lot about what we need to do to go and perform this year, [to] cement his place within the legends of the sport, and what's that going to take. We've discussed that. In that sense, it's the same as ever."
Brailsford had been fairly buoyant ahead of the press meeting, greeting much of the media with a smile as he walked through the hotel. For the rest of the team, it was business as usual as they ramp up their preparations for the season ahead. However, in this small corner of the beachfront hotel, the tension mounted as Brailsford fielded questions about the now famous 'jiffy bag' and the events surrounding it for almost half an hour.
In general, Brailsford was expansive, but he still gave little away and often declined to answer questions due to the ongoing investigation at UK Anti-Doping. One such question asked whether the lack of paper trail for the contents of the package, while everything else was seemingly documented, made him uncomfortable.
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