Chief sportswriter of The Sunday Times, David Walsh, has spent much of his career covering drugs in cycling. He made his name when he helped expose Lance Armstrong's doping during his career. One other journalist who was key in exposing Armstrong was Paul Kimmage, who until recently was a close friend of Walsh.
Kimmage has criticised Walsh in the past for what he thinks is Walsh's soft approach to questioning Team Sky even though he has been granted special personal access to Team Sky and Wiggins by the team's head of operations, Dave Brailsford.
1/2 David Walsh writes another glowing tribute to Dave Brailsford today in the S.T but ignores Brailsford's most notable achievement:
— Paul Kimmage (@PaulKimmage) July 24, 2016
2/2 Taking a sport with zero credibility in 2012 and changing nothing six years later.
— Paul Kimmage (@PaulKimmage) July 24, 2016
And Kimmage absolutely laid into Walsh on Sunday on 'Off the Ball', saying that their "relationship is dead" and that Walsh had failed to ask hard questions of Wiggins and Sky.
Kimmage asserted that this was because Walsh had perhaps been dazzled by fame, repeating a point he made in his Indo piece at the weekend that "celebrity has been the poison of many a man and it wasn't long before it was afflicting his judgment".
And Walsh responded to Kimmage's remarks speaking to Chris Donoghue on Newstalk's 'Drive' show:
I don't believe for a second I've been 'dazzled' by celebrity, I'm not a celebrity person. And Paul and I have had a tremendous friendship going back thirty years.
I told Paul at one time, when he had publicly cirticised me on social media, I asked him to come to me first with criticism and then if he felt the answer wasn't to his liking, that he could then go public. So at least he would have heard my point of view.
I told him that because of our shared experiences - I mean, this is a guy who as an amateur cyclist in France came and lived in my house for two or three months, with our family, we go back that far - I told Paul, 'I will never criticise you in public because we have too many shared experiences. If you do it to me, you are hitting a guy whose hands are by his side and who will never hit back.'
And I won't criticise Paul Kimmage. He's a tremendous journalist. He was once a dear, dear friend of mine, somebody I would put...I wouldn't have had three friends I was closer to than Paul Kimmage. And the last thing I would ever want to do is criticise him.
Walsh was then asked to respond to Kimmage's assertion that the relationship between the two was "dead".
Well, if he decides it is, it is. That makes me sad if it is, but you know, that's not something I would have said. I wouldn't have given up on it. But (if Kimmage says that) I don't have much choice in it. You know what? I'd be stuggling to see why, or what I've done.
But the thing about journalists is, we shouldn't really be writing about each other. There's great stories out there, and I've always had a view that that's what I would prefer to do. I saw the piece Paul wrote yesterday, and I thought to myself, 'Did I inject him (Wiggins) with this stuff?' Because I seem to be the villain of this. It was kind of amusing.
You can listen to the full interview with Walsh, where he also outlines his views on the Wiggins affair and Team Sky, below.
Update: Kimmage 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:
If only I had learned to keep my hands by my side... pic.twitter.com/qMnIb5abcT
— Paul Kimmage (@PaulKimmage) September 27, 2016
