IT SEEMS likely that on Sunday, Chris Froome will claim his fourth Tour de France title, his third consecutive win. This year has been one of the tightest ever Tours, although a distinctly uninspiring route has meant that much of the race made for some pretty dull viewing. However, in the past week, Team Sky decided they were going to give us all plenty to talk about, although it’s not what their riders are doing on the bike that has caught people’s attention.

On the first rest day of the Tour, Froome did not give a formal press conference for written media, something that is almost unheard of. Instead, he gave interviews to broadcast media with a few select written journalists permitted to listen in. It was a strange move by Team Sky, which has been under increased scrutiny in recent months due to a number of revelations including jiffy bags, medical records and TUEs.

However, the absence of a press conference was not the end of things. Earlier this week, Team Sky’s principal, Sir Dave Brailsford, lost the plot with cyclingnews.com journalist, Barry Ryan. Brailsford accused Ryan of “writing s***about [him]” before informing him that he was excluded from listening to Froome as the rider spoke to television outlets.

The dispute came from Ryan writing an opinion piece about Brailsford in the lead-up to the start of this year’s Tour and while the piece was far from fawning, neither was it particularly scathing, primarily summarising the goings on around Team Sky and Brailsford over the past year. Yet Brailsford took great exception to it, continuing to accuse Ryan of writing s*** before concluding the exchange by telling Ryan he could “stick it up his a***”.

It was a remarkable outburst, particularly considering how much of a play Brailsford made when Team Sky entered the sport in 2010 about how transparent they were going to be. Yet as soon as there are questions that he doesn’t like, the shutters come down and rather than answering the tricky questions – like he had promised – the questions are prevented from being asked.

Brailsford is beginning to remind me of Seb Coe. At one time, both men were lauded as being nothing short of geniuses in their field – Coe for delivering the best Olympic Games ever and Brailsford for developing a strategy that could seemingly produce the best cyclists in the world on demand. But as with Coe, Brailsford has been found wanting – both have shown signs that they must be either liars or incompetent and just as Seb Coe should have lost his job while he was busy obliterating athletics’ reputation, Brailsford seems to be a prime candidate for a P45.

Much of Brailsford’s secret has been to use corporate speak that has enthralled a number of journalists and much of the public. He’ll talk about marginal gains until he’s blue in the face yet he has been unable answer serious questions which require a level of transparency that he is unwilling or incapable of giving. How someone who, in certain aspects of his professional life, is incredibly savvy is unable to see how much damage he is doing to both Team Sky and the sport of cycling is quite astonishing. It is hard to judge whether he is most hurt by being called incompetent or being called a liar but either way, the criticisms has caused his veil of reasonableness to fall.

Another interesting aspect of this Team Sky shambles is the part Froome is playing. The 32-year-old has done his very best to make it appear he is distanced from all this allegedly nefarious behaviour at Team Sky; late last year, he failed to endorse Brailsford when almost every other Team Sky rider did so publicly. He has tried to make it appear that there is much clear water between himself and Brailsford yet when it came to the crunch, Froome re-signed with Team Sky. He could easily have found another team and so despite the game he is playing in trying to show there is distance, he is as tied as ever to the team and its principal.

Questions have been asked of Froome – much of that is due to cycling’s past while some of it is due to Froome’s impressive improvement - and while he has answered much of what has been asked of him, his actions in continuing to be wedded to Team Sky speaks louder than any words. Until he leaves the team, doubt will persist.

Froome remains far less culpable for any suspicion than Brailsford though. In a similar case, Mo Farah has taken his ire out on the media for doing their job in asking the hard questions despite every athlete being aware that elite sport and elite athletes are followed by a cloud of suspicion wherever both go.

The only way to resolve this though, is for the media to keep battering away with the hard questions until they are answered or the situation improves. In fairness to Seb Coe, after weathering the storm in which he almost destroyed athletics, he has come out the other side and done some good for the sport. Will Brailsford survive this onslaught? Quite possibly. And if he is forced to become more transparent despite his best efforts to resist, that will be another tiny step towards improving the sporting landscape.