Brailsford seems happiest when he’s studying a graph or analysing some statistics. Taking in the information, identifying the flaws and limiting factors, coming to a conclusion and seeing how he can apply what he’s learned to a practical problem. He spends hours looking at the Cycling Quotient website, cqranking.com, studying results. A cycling fanatic has created, in his spare time, a more effective ranking system than anything the UCI has come up with in the ProTour era. “It’s on my favourites and I look at it every day,” Brailsford says. “There are some flaws in it. For example, a rider will get the same amount of points for a sprint win as another rider will get for a summit finish but they are very different challenges. When you look at the rankings, Cav [Mark Cavendish] has 1,400 points and Hesjedal has 1,200 points but they’ve won them in completely different ways. As riders they don’t overlap at all.
“There are things you can’t tell from statistics but it’s useful as a guide. The site tells you how many days a rider has raced, how many kilometres they’ve raced. The ranking system tells you more than the UCI’s ProTour ranking. It’s the best source of information in pro cycling at the moment. You can see how many points a rider wins per kilometre raced, which is an interesting little fact.”