End of an era at Ineos Grenadiers after Sir Dave Brailsford steps down

Sir Dave Brailsford has officially stepped down as team principal of the Ineos Grenadiers cycling team, Telegraph Sport understands.

It is understood Brailsford, who was appointed to the Manchester United board following Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s acquisition of 29 per cent of the club last month, informed riders and staff at the winter training camp in Majorca that he would be officially stepping down.

Brailsford is leaving while he conducts an audit of United’s football operations and personnel, and his departure brings the curtain down on one of the most extraordinary chapters in British sporting history.

Brailsford, who co-founded the team in 2009 with backing from Sky UK, before leading it through a period of unprecedented success, as well as plenty of controversy, had been a largely peripheral figure in recent seasons as he focused on his role as director of sport for Ineos.

However, he had remained ‘team principal’ on the Grenadiers’ official website until Friday night, when he was removed.

The team declined to comment but a spokesperson indicated that the website had been undergoing updates to reflect some of the recent staff changes and that the removal of Brailsford’s name was not linked to any specific moment in time.

His departure marks a symbolic moment for the team, cutting the last and biggest remaining tie to the original Team Sky managerial line-up. Rod Ellingworth, the team’s deputy team principal and another founding member, resigned in November. Former CEO Fran Millar, another co-founder, left a few seasons ago to run the Ineos-owned clothing brand Belstaff.

Team Sky launched in 2010 with the stated ambition of winning the Tour de France with a British rider within five years. They achieved that feat two years later when Sir Bradley Wiggins became the first British winner of the Tour, triggering a cycling boom in the UK.

In total, Team Sky, who became Ineos Grenadiers in 2019, went on to win seven of eight editions of the Tour between 2012 and 2019, with four different riders, as well as five further grand tours between 2011 and 2021.

They also found themselves mired in controversy on more than one occasion. In March 2018 Team Sky were accused by a parliamentary select committee of crossing an “ethical line” in the use of therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs), an allegation they denied. The team’s former doctor Richard Freeman was also struck off the medical register in 2021, and later banned for four years by UK Anti-Doping, having had 30 sachets of a banned testosterone gel delivered to the National Cycling Centre back in 2011 before being found to have lied about it. Again, Brailsford and the team denied any wrongdoing.

Brailsford, 59, will still be involved with the cycling team in his capacity as Ineos director of sport, a position he took up in December 2021 with a view to working across Ratcliffe’s portfolio of sporting properties.

Ineos owns, or partly owns, a number of sports teams including Sir Ben Ainslie’s America’s Cup team, Mercedes F1 and OGC Nice, as well as Manchester United. Ineos also sponsors the All Blacks.

Ineos Grenadiers’s new chief executive John Allert, who will report to Brailsford and to Jean-Claude Blanc, Ineos Sport’s CEO, speaks to the media for the first time next week.