The country’s top athletics officials are tonight calling for a “full and frank investigation” into the goings on at the UKA endurance camp in Front Romeu. The revelations come after an official complaint was lodged by French President Sarkozy. The French head of state is said to be angry after cars have been thrown off mountains and a senior member of UKA staff was apprehended attempting to steal the bicycle of a disgruntled Tour de France hopeful. Performance supremo, Charles Van Commenee has not ruled out flying out to the Pyrenees later this week to “bring some order” to proceedings. “It’s a joke,” said the bespectacled ace, “what we need is discipline. They are not there to have fun.” The Dutchman is alleged to be planning to travel to France “as soon as UKA have designed an appropriate ski jacket” for the trip.
Meanwhile, insiders have told of a “blazing row” between George Gandy and Ian Stewart’s bungling PA, Spencer Barden. After “between 10 and 20 inches” of snow fell in the past 24 hours the guru is “hugely frustrated” according to our source. Barden claims that this “has never happened before” and maintains that he is “as frustrated as everyone else” at the weather. “Look, I came on a total of 12 reconnaissance trips and it never snowed. I’m stunned.” Gandy is thought to be upset after all training has had to be put on hold for the foreseeable future. “It’s a calamity,” said LSAC’s Director, “I worked on my tan in Portugal and now it’s fading fast....I woke up this morning and it looked like Kate Moss had sneezed. It’s very poor.” Not all UKA staffers were disappointed, however. Ian Stewart enjoyed “an excellent day” on the skiing slopes. “It was superb,” enthused UKA’s Director of Endurance, “it’s been tough since I returned from my holiday in the Maldives last week and so it was great just to relax.”
The snow has brought with it its own set of unique problems. Ryan McLeod clashed violently with Johnny Mellor in a snowball fight after Mellor beat the Newcastle man on FIFA 2010. Both athletes were left requiring minor medical treatment after the fight, with accusations of foul play marring the brawl. “Johnny’s shown himself to be really quite desperate,” thundered McLeod, “he put stones in the snowballs and that really hurt. He cheated on FIFA as well.” McLeod went on to accuse the Liverpool man of "living up to his reputation" by allegedly stealing some hubcaps on the trip down. For his part, Mellor rejected the "ridiculous accusations" and blamed his travel-mate for a poor start to the training trip. Referring to the fact that McLeod had driven the star to Front Romeu, he said “the plonker was all over the place. We had to remind him which side of the road to drive on and he kept playing on his iPhone.....I feel physically sick just thinking about it.” McLeod did concede a "catastrophic error" in forgetting to disable the "data roaming" facility on his iPhone. "It's going to cost a fortune," said the 13:58 5k man, "Lewis [Moses] has been on there downloading Michael Buble videos on YouTube."