Brailsford steps away from cycling to concentrate on Manchester United

Sir Dave Brailsford, the mastermind behind Team Sky and its Ineos-Grenadiers successor, has stepped away from cycling to focus on his new role at Manchester United. As Ineos chairman Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s chief sporting adviser, Brailsford is to concentrate on an audit into the club Ratcliffe paid £1.25bn to buy a quarter share of and take control of sporting affairs.

Brailsford, after his success as performance director of British Cycling, founded Team Sky in 2010, winning its first Tour de France in 2012, Bradley Wiggins taking the first of seven of eight editions until 2019 from four different riders, Chris Froome collecting four. The team collected five further Grand Tours under the Sky and Ineos banner that followed a rebrand in 2019.

The Derbyshire-born but Welsh-bred Brailsford has been team principal throughout that time, only for his name to be removed from their website on Friday. A team spokesman did not confirm his departure from the cycling team. He will remain involved but that change of status “reflects Sir Dave’s position as director of Ineos Sport”.

Before Ratcliffe’s move for a stake in United, Brailsford was working with Nice, currently second in France’s Ligue 1 table. Ineos also own Swiss club Lausanne, Sir Ben Ainslie’s America’s Cup team and has a share in the Mercedes F1 team.

Since Ratcliffe’s deal with the Glazer family was confirmed on Christmas Eve, Brailsford has been a regular visitor to the Old Trafford director’s box, and was sat with Sir Alex Ferguson and Ratcliffe during last week’s 2-2 draw with Tottenham.

Last week, during a brief introduction to the press, Ratcliffe expected his deal for United to be completed by “early Feb” and said: “I have done a few exciting things, but this caps it all. There’s no question about that.”

Brailsford, an often controversial figure during his time on the frontline of road cycling and notorious for his belief in “marginal gains”, has been detailed with overhauling the distressed asset Ratcliffe has bought into. United’s latest quarterly figures, released this week, showed the Glazers’s debt has increased to £773m and that an additional £364m is still owed in unpaid transfer fee instalments.

While Brailsford conducts his audit, Ratcliffe is understood to be willing to be patient with the United manager, Erik ten Hag, though the delay of his buy-in after 13 months of negotiation with the Glazers means there is unlikely to be investment during the current January transfer window.