British Cycling under scrutiny over allegations of ‘toxic culture’ in leadership team

British Cycling is facing further questions after a former employee accused it of having a “toxic culture” days after Matt Richardson was sent home from the World Track Championships in Shanghai.

Jack Lindsay, who worked as a commercial manager at British Cycling from 2024 to 2025, criticised the way he claimed it responded to his formal workplace bullying complaint spanning dozens of incidents. And he also questioned what he branded a lack of oversight from UK Sport, which has given the organisation £30m to prepare for the LA Olympics.

“The complaint covered dozens of incidents over six months, spanning multiple categories of alleged bullying,” Lindsay wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “Most were partially substantiated. There would be no apology, and I was told of no action against the individual I had sought to hold responsible.”

Lindsay also claimed that he had “repeatedly raised incidents of bullying by a member of the executive with members of the senior leadership team, and that management had chosen to address them informally”.

“It is not acceptable to continue subjecting staff to a leadership team that have perpetuated this toxic culture,” he said.

Lindsay said that after he resigned the-then British Cycling chief executive, Jon Dutton, told him that he would commission an independent survey of the leadership culture within the GB Cycling Team.

That survey, it was revealed by the Times newspaper this week, found that 31% of riders and staff were asked whether they had “witnessed or experienced thoughtless, inappropriate, or unacceptable behaviour” answered yes.

Meanwhile when they were asked for three words to describe the culture of their world class programme, “driven” was the most commonly used word among the riders but second-most prominent, alongside “supportive”, was “toxic”.

In response to a series of questions about Lindsay’s allegations, a British Cycling spokesperson said: “The wellbeing of our people is fundamental to everything we do at British Cycling. Any complaint is taken seriously and handled through our formal procedures and where appropriate, action is taken.

“Out of fairness to everyone involved, we do not comment on individual cases, and the details of any action taken are kept confidential,” he added. “We recognise that raising concerns can be difficult. There are established routes available to report concerns and we continue to strengthen how we listen to and support our people.”

Lindsay also drew parallels with how British Cycling’s governance and culture had been heavily criticised by Annamarie Phelps in an independent review in 2017, saying that “almost a decade later, leadership is taking the program in the same direction”.

“This reflects a wider problem in elite sport, where organisational reputation and relationships with funding bodies and the individuals within can become entangled with questions of accountability,” he wrote.

“The high-performance programme receives millions of pounds each year in public funding. Athletes, staff, sponsors and the public have a legitimate interest in whether the organisation upholds the standards it promotes.”

However a UK Sport spokesperson told the Guardian that the organisation did properly hold sports accountable and that its approach was “fundamentally and materially different to 2017”.

The spokesperson added that funded sports were required to “complete a cultural assurance exercise on an annual basis,” and to develop cultural action plans to strengthen and improve their culture. UK Sport said that a team of advisers was also in place to “provide assurance on our investment”.

“It is critical to us that the sports we invest in have a safe, healthy and high performing culture where athlete voice is included in decision making,” the spokesperson added. “We prioritise assuring culture within the performance programmes in which we invest as a key pillar of our approach to winning well.”