A female cyclist is stalked around the globe by a lecherous directeur sportif, who threatens suicide when she rejects him. A promising young rider is under the spell of a menacing control freak of a coach who physically abuses her when she fails to perform. A male team manager expects his women riders to do his laundry and make him dinner at a stage race. A soigneur fondles his riders on the massage table. The terrified athletes have no idea where to turn.
Sexual abuse scandals have plagued other sports - American collegiate football, British football, and USA Gymnastics have all had highly publicised failures to protect young athletes, and while cycling may not have the same environment as those sports, no segment of society is safe.
All too often, victims are threatened or intimidated into silence and, like the 'omerta' that allowed rampant doping into cycling, and a culture of abuse will go on unless it is shown the light of day.
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A handful of brave athletes have gone on the record about harassment, discrimination or abuse: Jess Varnish, Nicole Cooke, Marijn de Vries, Petra de Bruin, Tammy Thomas, Genevieve Jeanson, and, more recently, American track sprinter Missy Erickson, who detailed her abuse as a junior to Bicycling Magazine.
As a result of Varnish's and de Vries' stories, there have been two independent investigations launched into abuse and harassment in cycling - the UK Sport report of the inquiry sparked by Varnish is due in February, and an ongoing Dutch investigation that was sparked in part by de Vries, who wrote about her experiences in a blog on the Dutch site Trouw.nl entitled "Sick of the abuse of power".
In it, she highlighted her experiences of sexual abuse - a masseur who regularly touched her genitalia - verbal abuse from a directeur sportif "who told me week after week that I was rubbish. That I should bugger off and stop cycling, because I was a shit cyclist," and how she agonised about making it public. "I've thought a long time about the words I wrote above. Yes, I am ashamed. And I think it's really scary everyone can read my story right now. But I am convinced: the only way to make sport a safer place, is to talk about it."
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