NO names immediately spring to mind when Callum Skinner is asked if he has any political heroes, but then the Scottish cyclist freely admits he has never been the type to toe the party line. The 26-year-old, an Olympic gold medallist in the team sprint, is telling Herald Sport about his unlikely emergence as a shop steward for global sport, having been named this week as lead athlete in a new agency called Global Athlete which is hoping to give a louder voice to Olympic and Paralympic sportspeople the world over.

While global sporting politics chose him, rather than the other way around, when Russian hackers Fancy Bears leaked details of his therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) to the world, this new designation alongside Rob Koehler, a former deputy director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) might just prove the perfect mechanism for this free-thinking firebrand to keep fighting the good fight. It is worth stating that in the form of Graeme Obree, Robert Millar (now Philippa York) and David Millar, Skinner has no shortage of company when it comes to idiosyncratic Scottish cyclists unafraid to be part of the awkward squad.

“I don’t have any fear about putting my head above the parapet,” said Skinner, currently enjoying some down time from cycling. “There is so much low hanging fruit on this topic and stuff that can be improved that I really don’t think it is that outrageous to call for things like a fair anti-doping system, better representation for athletes and a fairer cut of the money.

“Personally, I’ve always felt I could offer more than just being an athlete,” he added. “Having that Olympic medal round your neck does give you a platform, rightly or wrongly, and I’ve always felt compelled to use it for good.”

If the catalyst for the birth of Global Athlete was the feeling that WADA had mis-handled the Russian doping affair by re-instating them to the fold too early, the plus side of that saga was the unanimity amongst the sporting fraternity in the UK against it all. While the IOC already have their own athletes committee, and various other sports have their own unions, Skinner and Koehler want to harness that commonality of interest to create a body capable of representing the diverse range of views across the athlete’s body – and are determined to attract a global spread of athletes.

“If you look at the professional cyclists’ association, David Millar attempted to run for president in that one and just found the whole process hideously undemocratic,” said Skinner. “Some nations weren’t allowed to vote, he had to ferry riders back and forth in his car because they weren’t allowed to vote by proxy. That is just an example of how the whole sporting movement works.

“It is almost as if things were stacked against him from the off and that is kind of what we feel about a lot of bodies,” he added. “Wada is another great example. You ask people ‘how do you make sense of it [their actions on Russia]’ and they say ‘well, that is what their stakeholders want’. You think ‘who do they think the stakeholders are?’ and the response is 50% governments and 50% the Olympic committee. But that is really disheartening if you are an athlete, because we have the most to lose.

“It is really quite antiquated and needs to be brought into the 21st century,” he added. “That is where Global Athlete comes in, it is young and fresh, run by athletes and in the next three months we are really hoping to build consensus on the issues which really need attention on sport.”

While the reaction – aside from a few tweets and a missive from the IOC Athletes Committee – has been uniformly positive, the danger here of course is that this agency becomes heavily waited towards Western attitudes. Skinner feels the opposite is the case.

“There is a bit more of a culture in the West in terms of athletes sporting out but one of our main goals is trying to get athletes from overseas territories involved,” he said. “We want to see a culture shift, to cherish the athletes voice. If an athlete were to voice that Russia should be reinstated I am going to respect their right to express that opinion even more than my own.”

As for ensuring athletes get greater rewards for their labours, in the short term that means loosening rules on sponsorship rather than anything more revolutionary. “In the UK we have been very fortunate with lottery funding so most athletes can make ends meet but that isn’t the case in a lot of countries,” says Skinner. “Ultimately, the IOC have to wake up to the fact that Olympics sport isn’t amateur any more, it is a living, a full time job. Here’s how restrictive they are: I was sponsored by Graham and Sibbald, the architects, before I was Olympic champion, I was eternally grateful for their support, but I wasn’t allowed to put out any thanks or put out any post up a month before, during or after the games. We don’t want a share of the IOC’s pot, we just want the opportunity to capitalise on our own income.”