A few years ago there was a catchy line used to describe Sir Dave Brailsford’s habit of emerging unscathed from troubling situations.
As Sir Jim Ratcliffe prepares to deploy him in his Manchester United rebuild, it is worth recalling.
The comment was spoken by Jonathan Vaughters, the team principal of one of Brailsford’s rivals in the cycling world, and it was delivered in 2018, when Sky announced they were getting out of a partnership in which they had spared no expense and won all there was to win.
‘He has an impressive ability to reach into the toilet and pull out chocolate,’ Vaughters said, and it was a sentiment that proved quite prescient.