Sky’s the Limit: Wiggins and Cavendish: The Quest to Conquer the Tour de France. Richard Moore
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on the road. With the technology we can use, we’ll know where the athletes are at every stage of the race in terms of their condition and how they’re feeling. We’ll have all the scientific data – heart rates, power outputs, all that. A road race is like starting a journey with a full tank of petrol and distributing it evenly over the race, making sure you’re empty at the end of it.
‘In my days as a rider there was none of this,’ continued Sutton, whose career included one start of the Tour de France, with the ill-fated British team, ANC-Halfords, in 1987. ‘The game’s moved on. But with the association with a company like Sky we could really move it on some more. Look at the sports Sky have been involved with. Football – they’ve revolutionised it. They’ve made darts players into household names! They don’t do things by halves. We’ve got the same mentality. Cycling is our life.
‘We’ve done a great job on the track,’ continued Sutton. ‘Now let’s see what we’re capable of on the road.
Throughout the week in Manchester Dave Brailsford talked to the riders; he talked to them individually and as a group; he talked and he talked. He infused everyone with his own enthusiasm; he bestrode the gathering like a colossus; he was omniscient. Of course, for successful sports coaches or managers reputation is everything, and Brailsford’s – following the success he’d masterminded in Beijing – could hardly have been higher.
Like all the best managers, Brailsford seemed able to get the best out of people. In Manchester he presided over the camp, and the countless meetings, with confidence and a sense of certainty, which fed into and reinforced the aura around him. His staff reinforced it, too. ‘People like Dave come along once in a lifetime,’ said Sutton. ‘I’ve been fortunate to be in Dave’s time. Listen, I think there are three key things behind our success: great leadership, which Dave’s given us; a great coaching system; and gifted athletes who want to aspire to achieve things on the big stage. Now we’ve also got the Sky empire behind us. We’re setting out with a full tank of petrol.’
‘What’s Dave like?’ said Dan Hunt, repeating the question. ‘Well I’ve worked with him for just over four years. And I’d say … Fantastic. He’s a good boss, a good leader; he’s motivational and inspirational. He’s hard but pretty fair. I’ve survived four years, anyway.’
Above all else, though, what Brailsford was in Manchester was in charge. And being in charge is a good place to start.
And yet several of the riders were also surprised by another aspect of the new team. Though Brailsford was in charge, he said he wouldn’t be a dictator. Team Sky would be a democracy, he told the riders. They would all have a say in decision-making, just as the track team had done. In fact, this system of management had evolved with the track team, particularly after disputes over team selections. ‘What the riders want to know, more than anything else,’ said Brailsford, ‘is who picks the team, and what are the selection criteria.’ After one dispute with the track sprinting team, Brailsford and his team charged them with drawing up the selection criteria. ‘They went away and tried for hours to come up with criteria they were all happy with, and they couldn’t do it,’ said Brailsford. ‘But at least they understood how difficult it was.’ And they felt empowered, he added.
Here in Manchester, as Mat Hayman noted, Brailsford challenged the riders of Team Sky to draw up their own rules – over timekeeping; selection for the Tour de France; whether to have internal drug-testing, or not. ‘The riders make the decisions,’ said Kurt Asle Arvesen, another experienced rider, and an exile from the Saxo Bank team. ‘That’s something new for me. I think it’s going to be great; we’ve made our own rules! Now, if we don’t follow them, well, they’re our rules. We did some of the same things at Saxo Bank, but we didn’t go as far as this.’
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