Lawyers acting for former Great Britain track rider Jess Varnish have accused British Cycling of withholding information relating to her removal from the Olympic programme and the investigation into her bullying complaint against ex-technical director Shane Sutton.
In December, the sprinter's lawyers sent a "subject access request" to the governing body for her performance data, medical records and all emails and text messages sent by senior staff in the GB set-up about her.
Simon Fenton, an employment specialist at law firm Irwin Mitchell, said British Cycling's response to this request is at odds with the new approach to athlete welfare it is scheduled to announce at the National Cycling Centre on Thursday.
Fenton said: "We are reluctantly getting as little information as they feel legally obliged to give us, which we think is some way short of what we should get.
"So at the same time as they are promising to be more accountable and transparent, they are subjecting us to litigation by correspondence. They are saying to us 'you can have the information, eventually, but you can't tell anybody about it'."
Central to Varnish's request is the internal investigation into her complaint against Sutton that was led by British Cycling director Alex Russell.
That process found the straight-talking Australian, who has denied bullying athletes, guilty of one count of using inappropriate language but could not find enough evidence to support eight other charges. This ruling upset both Sutton and Varnish.
Her hopes of qualifying for the Rio Olympics in the team sprint were ended at the Track World Championships in London in March, partly because of selection issues earlier in the qualification period.
The 26-year-old criticised the GB coaches after this setback but her anger would escalate a month later when her funding was not renewed. British Cycling has consistently claimed this was not retribution for her track-side remarks in London but a result of her declining performances.
Varnish, however, reacted by claiming in the Daily Mail that Sutton told her to "go and have a baby", among other sexist remarks, which led to further allegations of bullying and derogatory language made by other riders against the team's most senior coach.
Sutton promptly resigned and two investigations were launched into the affair: one by Russell and the other, a wider look at the squad's culture, by British Rowing chair Annamarie Phelps on behalf of the Government funding agency UK Sport. Publication of the latter is already three months behind schedule.
Fenton said British Cycling has so far provided only a "heavily redacted and rather thin" version of the Russell report.
British Cycling, however, believes it has "complied" with Varnish's subject access request and points out that Russell promised those who gave evidence to her investigation that their testimony would be confidential.
It is also understood it considers the correspondence with Varnish's lawyers as part of a process towards an agreed position on what can and should be publicly revealed.
In regards to Varnish's complaint about Sutton, a British Cycling spokesman said: "The board put on record its sincere regret that this happened and are committed to ensuring the findings of the investigation will help the development of the organisation alongside the independent review into the culture of the World Class Programme."