Sir Dave Brailsford has written to the UCI suggesting it works with professional teams towards giving public access to a range of power and physiological data from all their riders. His move comes in the wake of the controversy during last year’s Tour de France about what power the double winner Chris Froome might be producing on his bike and what it may mean.

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In the past Brailsford has said the release of data across the board would not be helpful because the raw material would merely provide grist to the mill of conspiracy theory, and that it may well, in some cases, give rivals a competitive edge.

Speaking at Team Sky’s season-opening media day on Tuesday, he said: “I’ve actually written to [the UCI president] Brian Cookson about this because it strikes me on the whole releasing of data – data in terms of power, the key climbs – it seems to me that’s a sport-wide issue, it’s not a Team Sky issue or an issue for one rider.

“It’s obviously impacting the sport and impacting a lot of people in terms of how they’re interpreting a rider and the sport. That’s why I wrote to Brian. It should be standardised. If we all agree, what I want is to take away the element of: ‘Well, Team Sky are willing to do this or they’re not willing to do this.’ If we all agreed as teams that here is the disclosure model that we’re all going to do, all going to buy into, it takes away that discretionary decision of we’re willing to or not willing to [and hence] they’re open or they’re not open.

“Brian has written back to say he thinks it’s definitely worth discussing but it’s not easy to do. I’d like to think we could get to a position where we recognise this is not something that’s going to go away but as a sport we could address it rather than leaving it to one rider or one team. I think it would help the sport.”

Brailsford added: “We feel under a lot of pressure. We get asked more than any other team about data. Our riders, particularly Chris, get asked more about data. The onus falls on us and whatever decision we make and how people interpret that in terms of our willingness to be open or not. But if we all had an agreement that ‘right, this is what we are going to do as a sport in general’, that’s a better way of thinking about it.”

To some extent Sky have had their hand forced because other teams such as Giant-Alpecin have made data public either officially or through the website Strava, which publishes riders’ power data as well as their times for climbs. Ironically, it almost mirrors the position taken by one of Sky’s main critics, the former Festina trainer Antoine Vayer, who called for teams to release data across the board in a Guardian interview in July: “Everyone asks if they are clean. If I say yes, they laugh and say ‘prove it’. To say riders are clean, you need the data.”

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By the second rest-day of the Tour, after speculation on French television over Froome’s figures, Brailsford, the rider and Sky had decided to make a limited amount of his data public. At the time, Froome said he would be willing to release more, providing all other teams did the same; the double Tour winner went one step further in early December by putting on view the findings of independent physiological tests carried out immediately after the Tour at the GSK Human Performance laboratory in London.

Brailsford added that in his view, the controversies in athletics were leading that sport into a similar situation faced by cycling in 1998 after the Festina scandal revealed widespread doping. “If you compare it to our sport a point in time came with an event that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Something now has to be done [in athletics],” he said. “While that felt pretty tough at the time for our sport, it is in a much better place now. Better than maybe it ever has been.

“My experience would say don’t wait. Look in the mirror. Warts and all. Get it all out. The sooner the better. If you really want to get over those hurdles now you increase your chances of being able to move forward. I think now they have an opportunity, as tough as it may seem.”