Cycling: Who's behind the cycling drug bust?

When Labor's chief Senate Inquisitor, John Faulkner, dropped his bombshell in the chamber last Friday revealing drug abuse in Australian cycling, it was clear he had some high level inside help.

Notwithstanding his enigmatic truth-extraction skills, Faulkner is most unlikely to have made his splash – which presaged the destruction of a junior champion’s young career and opened a nest of alleged drug taking on the eve of the Olympics – single-handed.

Whoever tipped off Faulkner to the story had to be pretty high up in the sports hierarchy to have access to all the details the former Sports Minister spilled into the Senate. And the source would’ve known this would send cycling – and the Australian Sports Commission - into an enormous # fight less than two months before the Olympics.

But who would want this, and who had the access? Amateur sleuths will tell you that often times the source of a story will be named by the author – even when he wants to protect that source. So when a hack writes a yarn he may quote the person who gave him the info, as a "thank you".

Similarly, a pollie dropping a bucket of dirty water in Parliament might tip the nod to his source, in the form of a complimentary reference during the speech. On Friday, Faulkner named just four people in his 1200 word speech: the unfortunate lad, Mark French, ASC chairman Peter Bartels and Sports Minister Rod Kemp – both of whom he bagged.