Back-to-back victories for Britain's Chris Froome and Bradley Wiggins will realise Sky's aim of dominating road cycling using the same methods that brought Olympic success
There is new joke doing the rounds among cycling fans: British Tour de France winners are like London red buses. You wait years for one to come along, and then you get two, one right after the other. Two British victors of cycling's toughest event back to back might seem an outlandish idea, but Dave Brailsford, Team Sky, Chris Froome and Bradley Wiggins have managed to make it seem routine at the same time.
In July 2009, Team Sky was merely a series of spreadsheets, random jottings, and what the team's founders term "brain dumps" as Brailsford and his associates tried to figure out how to start a professional cycling team. They had little idea of what they were getting into. But this July Froome started as the overwhelming Tour favourite, led the race from the end of week one, and never looked likely to be beaten. Wiggins did exactly the same in 2012.
It has taken four years, but that is not a coincidence: four years is an Olympic cycle, the time frame in which British Cycling, the UK's governing body, and its performance director, Brailsford, have tended to function since the arrival of lottery funding into the sport in 1997. Britain's Tour de France domination stems directly from its record Olympic medal hauls, which drew in the big money from Sky – James Murdoch is an active cyclist and turns up at races intermittently – and gave Brailsford the knowledge base from which to climb cycling's Everest: the Tour.
The Sky goal was to dominate road cycling using the same methods that had brought Olympic success, most notably the "aggregation of marginal gains", where every area is examined in minute detail for possible improvement, and the cumulative effect of many small gains gives a considerable advance on the opposition. Sky would also use the people management principles devised by Steve Peters, the "mechanic of the mind", a criminal psychiatrist who had worked at Rampton mental hospital.
Year one was a struggle. The "marginal gains" that Sky brought to cycling initially made it the butt of derision. Its special set-up at time trial stages, with non-slip matting laid out so the cyclists wouldn't slip in their custom-made carbon-fibre soled shoes, took hours to set up – and other teams would laugh at them as they toiled away.
Attempts to use weather modelling to locate training camps and decide Wiggins's start time in a Tour time trial fell spectacularly flat. Staff would grumble at the extra effort it took lugging the riders' custom-made bedding in and out of hotels every night. There were tensions among riders and staff, with European hirings struggling to fit into the British Cycling way of working. Key members left; there were complaints about the constant meetings.
The ridicule and mutterings lasted only as long as it took for Sky to start winning, and since the end of 2011 it has been a trail of success, not just in the Tour but other stage races. By then its training guru, Tim Kerrison, had begun putting together a radical programme which is at the root of Wiggins and Froome's successes: intense training at high altitude, reverse periodisation, which turned the idea of a gradual buildup to the Tour on its head, less racing and more training.
Ellingworth and Kerrison put together a method of internal communication based around dropboxes, to compensate for the fact that the team's 80 personnel were spread around Europe. Advanced planning and logistical systems were put in place. More training staff were hired, so that, uniquely in professional cycling, Sky's riders benefit from one-to-one training on a constant basis. "You can see from this team how much you can get by investing relatively small amounts in coaching," Kerrison has told the Guardian. "The gains are disproportionate." Kerrison's computer modelling of the Tour's athletic demands meant the team could target precisely what training was needed to win the Tour.
There has been no letup on the marginal gains front. The team's dietician, Nigel Mitchell, has been a constant presence on the race, monitoring every gram the riders consume, including the fish oils and fruit and vegetable shakes that are Sky staples. The fruits of Froome's work in a wind tunnel could be seen in his time trial success and in the bursts of speed on the climbs that won him the race. And the Olympic link is as strong as ever: two of Sky's key team members, Geraint Thomas and Peter Kennaugh, were gold medallists at the "Pringle" in London.
On Saturday, Froome spoke about his personal journey to Tour de France success, from pounding dirt tracks in Kenya as a teenager when he was unaware La Grande Boucle even existed. But the voyage taken by Brailsford and his cohorts from callow tyros to Tour tyrants is equally remarkable. The Sky head said before the Tour that in 2010 he would have given his right arm to see one of his cyclists make the podium in a major Tour; now the cycling world is scrabbling to catch up. Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.
There is new joke doing the rounds among cycling fans: British Tour de France winners are like London red buses. You wait years for one to come along, and then you get two, one right after the other. Two British victors of cycling's toughest event back to back might seem an outlandish idea, but Dave Brailsford, Team Sky, Chris Froome and Bradley Wiggins have managed to make it seem routine at the same time.
In July 2009, Team Sky was merely a series of spreadsheets, random jottings, and what the team's founders term "brain dumps" as Brailsford and his associates tried to figure out how to start a professional cycling team. They had little idea of what they were getting into. But this July Froome started as the overwhelming Tour favourite, led the race from the end of week one, and never looked likely to be beaten. Wiggins did exactly the same in 2012.
It has taken four years, but that is not a coincidence: four years is an Olympic cycle, the time frame in which British Cycling, the UK's governing body, and its performance director, Brailsford, have tended to function since the arrival of lottery funding into the sport in 1997. Britain's Tour de France domination stems directly from its record Olympic medal hauls, which drew in the big money from Sky – James Murdoch is an active cyclist and turns up at races intermittently – and gave Brailsford the knowledge base from which to climb cycling's Everest: the Tour.
The Sky goal was to dominate road cycling using the same methods that had brought Olympic success, most notably the "aggregation of marginal gains", where every area is examined in minute detail for possible improvement, and the cumulative effect of many small gains gives a considerable advance on the opposition. Sky would also use the people management principles devised by Steve Peters, the "mechanic of the mind", a criminal psychiatrist who had worked at Rampton mental hospital.
Year one was a struggle. The "marginal gains" that Sky brought to cycling initially made it the butt of derision. Its special set-up at time trial stages, with non-slip matting laid out so the cyclists wouldn't slip in their custom-made carbon-fibre soled shoes, took hours to set up – and other teams would laugh at them as they toiled away.
Attempts to use weather modelling to locate training camps and decide Wiggins's start time in a Tour time trial fell spectacularly flat. Staff would grumble at the extra effort it took lugging the riders' custom-made bedding in and out of hotels every night. There were tensions among riders and staff, with European hirings struggling to fit into the British Cycling way of working. Key members left; there were complaints about the constant meetings.
The ridicule and mutterings lasted only as long as it took for Sky to start winning, and since the end of 2011 it has been a trail of success, not just in the Tour but other stage races. By then its training guru, Tim Kerrison, had begun putting together a radical programme which is at the root of Wiggins and Froome's successes: intense training at high altitude, reverse periodisation, which turned the idea of a gradual buildup to the Tour on its head, less racing and more training.
Ellingworth and Kerrison put together a method of internal communication based around dropboxes, to compensate for the fact that the team's 80 personnel were spread around Europe. Advanced planning and logistical systems were put in place. More training staff were hired, so that, uniquely in professional cycling, Sky's riders benefit from one-to-one training on a constant basis. "You can see from this team how much you can get by investing relatively small amounts in coaching," Kerrison has told the Guardian. "The gains are disproportionate." Kerrison's computer modelling of the Tour's athletic demands meant the team could target precisely what training was needed to win the Tour.
There has been no letup on the marginal gains front. The team's dietician, Nigel Mitchell, has been a constant presence on the race, monitoring every gram the riders consume, including the fish oils and fruit and vegetable shakes that are Sky staples. The fruits of Froome's work in a wind tunnel could be seen in his time trial success and in the bursts of speed on the climbs that won him the race. And the Olympic link is as strong as ever: two of Sky's key team members, Geraint Thomas and Peter Kennaugh, were gold medallists at the "Pringle" in London.
On Saturday, Froome spoke about his personal journey to Tour de France success, from pounding dirt tracks in Kenya as a teenager when he was unaware La Grande Boucle even existed. But the voyage taken by Brailsford and his cohorts from callow tyros to Tour tyrants is equally remarkable. The Sky head said before the Tour that in 2010 he would have given his right arm to see one of his cyclists make the podium in a major Tour; now the cycling world is scrabbling to catch up. Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.