PARIS: Team Ineos general manager Dave Brailsford has revealed he has undergone surgery for prostate cancer.
The 55-year-old who has masterminded Team Sky and Ineos’ domination of the Tour de France over the past decade and led Britain’s cycling success at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics, had surgery last month after the diagnosis a week before the Tour de France started in July.
“It’s easy to think ‘why is it happening to me?’ I’ve worked hard on my health so you can get bitter, angry, frustrated,” he told The Times.
“I had to learn to accept it. Talking about it among the team was a massive help.”
Brailsford will find out on Saturday whether surgery was successful.
However, he believes the experience has already changed his perspective on life.
Egan Bernal’s victory at the Tour de France this year was the seventh in the past eight years Brailsford has been part of, but the celebration was an even more emotional one.
“I am thinking ‘who knows, I might not do this again?'” Brailsford added.
Four of those seven Tour titles were won by Chris Froome, who also admitted he is “grateful to be alive” in an interview with The Telegraph on Friday, after suffering multiple fractures after crashing into a wall at more than 50 kilometres per hour in June.
And Brailsford thinks both he and Froome have a new appreciation for life after the health scares they have suffered in recent month.
“Perhaps now I just want to enjoy it more,” added Brailsford.
“It’s not easy when you are having to talk about cancer to a 14-year-old daughter but it does bring you closer to people. It gives you a different appreciation.
“Simple things, like going for a walk. Froomey was telling me there was a point when he could get out of bed into a wheelchair and go to the loo by himself. For him that was monumental.”
