Paul Kimmage and David Walsh used to be extremely close friends. In his book, 'Rough Ride', Kimmage outlined Walsh's key role in helping him get started in journalism. But that relationship is "dead", according to Kimmage during an explosive radio interview on 'Off the Ball' today.
In the 'Sunday Times' today Walsh, who has spent several years with personal access to Team Sky, has written a piece in which he has outlined the questions that now linger over the achievements of Team Sky and Bradley Wiggins following the publication of Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs) Wiggins used in order to take triamcinolone, a corticosteroid that Wiggins claims he took for asthma and respiratory problems.
The fact that Wiggins took the drug shortly before three Grand Tours has raised suspicions, not least because of claims Wiggins made in his autobiography 'My Time' that he had never taken an injection in his career.
Walsh and Kimmage have both written pieces highlighting these suspicions for their respective Sunday papers. However, a criticism of Walsh over the past few years has been that, though he has been given such access to Sky, he has been too praising of them in his work (in contrast to how furiously he pursued Lance Armstrong during his career).
Kimmage spoke on Off the Ball this morning, and it made for must-listen radio.
You can listen to the full slot here:
Here is a transcript of the section of the interview pertaining to David Walsh. Molloy began by asking why David Walsh was brought into Kimmage's Sunday Independent piece about the questions regarding Bradley Wiggins and his use of TUEs:
Paul Kimmage (PK): We haven't got transparency [in cycling], there are lot of questions there, and the sport isn't in a better place. The reason I brought David into it, as he has been the spokesman. On the Andrew Marr show this morning, Andrew Marr used him as 'the journalist who exposed Lance Armstrong, has been invited in to spend time with you, and he now says it looks bad'. So even Andrew Marr now is using David Walsh as someone who has been vocal in his praise, and certain in his belief in Team Sky, and is now expressing doubts.
My point would be would be that David Walsh had these doubts from day one, and for whatever reason, I would suspect it is celebrity, and the effect of not having a friend to say 'look, you have to get your head out of your ass, and actually look at what's happening', that affected his judgement.
Joe Molloy (JM) - How do you know he had these doubts?
PK: History is written by the winners. So if you turn back the clock to Bradley Wiggins' Tour de France win, which is essentially what this story is about, it's Bradley Wiggins winning that tour and getting that TUE, at a time when he was in superb form. So if you look at that Tour de France in 2012, and where we were at that time. I was unemployed, I had been unemployed for seven months, I hadn't had a commission in that time. I was sitting in Portugal with David, who wasn't on the race. Think about that. Between us we had covered every tour back to..I'm tempted to say 1986, because I was riding it and he was reporting on it but there wouldn't have been too many that we'd have missed.
So you've got the chief sports writer of the Sunday Times, you've got Bradley Wiggins - the first Briton in history to win the race - and the chief sports writer of the Sunday Times is not on the race.
My belief is that there were legitimate questions that needed to be asked of Bradley Wiggins after that race, the same questions that David had asked of Lance Armstrong and everybody else. There was a difference. Lance Armstrong was American. We had both suffered at the paper as a result of trying to expose Lance Armstrong at the paper, and at that time, in July 2012, Lance Armstrong was still a hero, he had not been brought down.
I was shafted, David was looking at me being shafted, all these issues were coming up with a British rider, and I think he looked at me and thought 'maybe I should sit this out'.
We were two beaten dockets in 2012.
Then, two months later, Lance is blown. Who is the man who brought down Lance? David Walsh. Who's the guy they were thinking of sacking two months ago? David Walsh. Oh, but we can't sack him now, he's the hero. Now, suddenly, he's being paraded as the champion of journalism. Our man.
Check the archives, of that famous press conference I had with Armstrong in LA in 2009, I couldn't write about it. We weren't allowed write this guy's name in The Sunday Times for years, and I kept taking that fight to them [The Sunday Times], I went to two Tour de France races but had to come home, because I wasn't allowed to write about him. That was the context of this in 2012.
But then, when Lance was blown, it's hey, where are the people who brought you this guy? Which was fair to a degree. They weren't saying 'when he put it up to us, we backed down and we weren't prepared to keep doing it'. They weren't saying that.
Suddenly, David is the hero. He will probably argue that point.
JM: I think it sounds unfair on him if I was him. He was doing his job to the best of his ability, he went in to Team Sky -
PK: What is unfair?
JM: The context I accept. I would say on going into Sky: is it not a bigger story for David Walsh to go into Team Sky and expose them? Is he not, then, one of the greatest journalists of all time?
PK: Yes. But this where we disagree. This is where my problem with David starts. So Lance is blown in October, [Dave] Brailsford offers him an invitation [to Team Sky] in November. He pays his first visit to Team Sky in January. He writes a piece in The Sunday Times that says 'No Hiding Place', that's the headline on the piece, one month after his first visit: 'The battle for credibility in cycling brings an extraordinary offer from Dave Brailsford'.
There is nothing extraordinary about this offer. They had offered me the same access in 2010. On the eve of the race, they withdrew that access, for whatever reason, I was upsetting them. Do you not think that, in terms of setting out where we are coming from here folks, that David should have said that Brailsford had made this offer before and reneged on it. So that's just to put things in context, there was none of that.
In the same piece, he writes of Bradley Wiggins and this young pro, an Americam, Joe Dombrowski, ripping off the yellow wristband off this young pro who had ridden for the Livestrong team [the cyclist had just joined Team Sky]. So, anti-doping Brad, great ethics, this is the impression we are given.
But Dave could have given another example of Wiggins' complete hypocrisy over that. He'd gone out in his autobiography, glowing with praise for Armstrong. He didn't highlight that at all. From the get go, David Walsh has gone out and has his mind made up that these guys are great.
JM: What has he said when you put that to him?
PK: That piece was published in Ferbruary. We had a screaming match, not an argument, a screaming match. Now I was doing the screaming. The things I was screaming was all of the things I just mentioned just now. The fact that this extraordinary offer hadn't mentioned how I'd been shafted by the team, Wiggins, who had given me a particularly hard time, none of that was mentioned in the piece. We had this screaming match, and for a while, things were patched up.
JM: What was his defence? Because obviously he is not here to defend himself.
PK: I don't remember what his defence was. I was screaming so much I wasn't really listening. I just found that curious, this "extraordinary offer", that you wouldn'tactually say that these guys have made this before and while I'm prepared to put my foot in the door and accept this offer, it comes with some reservations. There are no reservations expressed in that piece whatsoever.
What was wrong with waiting six months, from January until they had won the tour with France What was wrong with waiting six months, and saying 'ok, I've spent six months with the team, this is what I found, and this is what I didn't find.
My big problem with David Walsh is this. It is his absolute certainty that Chris Froome is clean. One thing, you cannot have with any of this, is certainty.
JM: If you read his piece today, he seems to have changed his mind.
PK: Has he changed his mind? I don't know. I think he is now recognising the stuff he should have recognised back then, had his judgement not been affected by the plaudits he was getting. I keep waiting for some kind of mea culpa. I may actually have got this wrong, I'm waiting for that to happen. Is that unfair?
JM:...no. but it's clearly a very personal thing between you and him.
PK: Personal? I'll tell you what's personal Joe. My love for this sport is personal.
JM: No, I know. It struck me today, reading your piece, 'God, this is another potential nail in the coffin of their relationship'
PK: Oh, the relationship is dead. It's over. That's it, it's finished.
Kimmage went on later to say 'I may be an asshole, but I'm a consistent asshole".
Listen to it here:
It is also on the Newstalk website here.
Update: Walsh appeared on 'Newstalk Drive' a day later, where he was questioned by Chris Donoghue on his relationship with Kimmage. Walsh said that he would never criticise Kimmage after all that they had been through so what Kimmage was doing was equivalent to "hitting a guy whose hands are by his side".
Kimmage then responded to Walsh with a not-so-subtle tweet of an extract from Walsh's book that seemed to indicate Kimmage was prepared to resign from 'The Sunday Times' in the past in order to back up Walsh at a time when it looked like Walsh might have to.
See also: "You Are Hitting A Guy Whose Hands Are By His Side": David Walsh Responds To Paul Kimmage
See Also: What Happened When Joe Brolly And Paul Kimmage Went For A Pint After The All-Ireland
