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Is Brailsford tactically inept?

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theyoungest said:
These big money teams know one thing, and that is money. Buy the best riders, buy the best trainers, buy the best equipment. But when it comes to actual bike racing, the kind that doesn't just involve a team time trial toward the finish, they're toast.

The last point is evidenced by their ongoing Classics disasters, though Henao did podium FW. But when it comes to stage races, they seem to be doing ok since start of 2012:

Tour de France x1
Dauphine x2
Tour of Norway x2
Paris-Nice x2
Romandie x2
Criterium International x1
Oman x1

and maybe others that don't leap to mind.

Not all of those involved a 'team time trial toward the finish', especially the ones Froome was involved with.

Also, Sky signed the following for 2013:

Jon Tiernan-Locke
Vasil Kiryienka
David Lopez
Josh Edmondson
Joe Dombrowski
Ian Boswell
Dario Cataldo
Gabriel Rasch

What % of those would you describe as 'the best'? They brought in team players and potential.
 
Mar 31, 2010
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theyoungest said:
Yes, Sky are definitely the better team in the sense that they also use their money to buy good trainers/coaches. But these trainers know how to prepare their riders for just one type of effort: a controlled, regular mountain stage with a climb at the end. 200 k tempo and then the last 20 k full gas.

Tactical racing, one day racing, racing from start to finish, they have no advantage at all there. Quite the opposite, actually.

that's because these morons are from track cycling and braislford thinks they are the same thing :eek:
 
argyllflyer said:
The last point is evidenced by their ongoing Classics disasters, though Henao did podium FW. But when it comes to stage races, they seem to be doing ok since start of 2012:

snipped...

FW is the best semi classic to get a result using the kind of model Sky deploys in stage races. Everybody rides together for 190km and sprints in the end.

Eventually Sky will adopt a different model for the other classics and probably win a few of them.

They do have the base talents for it imo.
 
Sep 25, 2009
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Dazed and Confused said:
FW is the best semi classic to get a result using the kind of model Sky deploys in stage races. Everybody rides together for 190km and sprints in the end.

Eventually Sky will adopt a different model for the other classics and probably win a few of them.

They do have the base talents for it imo.

They just need to do a hands off approach there, riders will either do it right or learn what not to do next time.
 
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wwabbit said:
I would say no, but only because the same argument can be used to legitimize Wiggin's win last year :D

No. Last year Wiggins had Julich and Yates as DS in the car. They know racing. Julich was on CSC back in the days when Yates was DS there, and they often split the field like this in Paris-Nice and tour 2004. They would have known that Saxo would try this.

Froome wins on brute force, despite having less tactical awareness on Sky, compared to more seasoned teams. It's hard to win if you're not the strongest, but even strength can be too little if they don't make the right decisions on the road.
I predict that this is not the last time that there will be panic in the Sky-cars. However Froome probably will still win.
 
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wwabbit said:
I would say no, but only because the same argument can be used to legitimize Wiggin's win last year :D

The only problem with that logic is that Sky had a better team supporting Wiggins last year. ;)
 
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I think that last year, wiggins got away because of lack of a quality field. The strong-arm tactics of Sky was sufficient to beat last year's field, but it is found lacking this year.

Yellow at the head of the field is just basics. if Sky is not interested in being at the front of the field when the valverde incident happened, then they could have stayed couple of positions down.
 
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darwin553 said:
The only problem with that logic is that Sky had a better team supporting Wiggins last year. ;)

last year the field of compeititon was horrible. jvdb and nibali were the best climbers in what few mountainstafges we had :eek:
 
Ryo Hazuki said:
servais knaven if you eve rlooked or listened at him you know he has no persoanlity. braislford will outscream him in the teamcar for sure and change tactics, which he doesn't understand. sunderland even left because of this and de jongh a few days ago in dutch tv said things would go wrong when he started interfering. so let's all be grateful for brailsford and the inept idiot that he is
What about Portal?
 
Ryo Hazuki said:
last year the field of compeititon was horrible. jvdb and nibali were the best climbers in what few mountainstafges we had :eek:

Yeah because this year there are WONDERFUL climbers :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

A non-juiced Contador that keeps there only with his grit.
A completely empty JROD, good for nothing this year.
A useless Balaverde, riding for a podium spot and nothing else.
TGBM? You must be kidding me.
Ten Dam. Never been a captain, never will.
Kreuziger? The guy with an ego bigger than his engine?

The only interesting additions are Quintana, Kwiatko & Sexy.Fuglsang, And all of them are still unproven.
 
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Pippo_San said:
Yeah because this year there are WONDERFUL climbers :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

A non-juiced Contador that keeps there only with his grit.
A completely empty JROD, good for nothing this year.
A useless Balaverde, riding for a podium spot and nothing else.
TGBM? You must be kidding me.
Ten Dam. Never been a captain, never will.
Kreuziger? The guy with an ego bigger than his engine?

The only interesting additions are Quintana, Kwiatko & Sexy.Fuglsang, And all of them are still unproven.

how could you discount AC? Quintana is a wild card. and, fugslang has not put a foot wrong so far. then there is dan martin and garmin, waiting to show that they are not a team of losers.
 
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Pippo_San said:
Yeah because this year there are WONDERFUL climbers :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

A non-juiced Contador that keeps there only with his grit.
A completely empty JROD, good for nothing this year.
A useless Balaverde, riding for a podium spot and nothing else.
TGBM? You must be kidding me.
Ten Dam. Never been a captain, never will.
Kreuziger? The guy with an ego bigger than his engine?

The only interesting additions are Quintana, Kwiatko & Sexy.Fuglsang, And all of them are still unproven.

facepalm.gif
 
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SafeBet said:
not to anyone who knows cycling. I recall cassani (rai) saying it could happen 20 km before it actually happened.



If you listen to everyone's predictions, thereis sure to be a correct one in the bunch.

Predicting Omega and Belkin would attack makes sense given the talents of their teams. Contador read their move correctly and added to it. Froome missed out completely. He sure seems to be looking down a LOT.

In the post-race interview with Cav, he stated he did more watts to bridge to the move than he did in the finishing sprint.

Froome got caught napping. I would hardly blame that on the DS.
 
murali said:
how could you discount AC?

Lack of power in week one.

It's possible the end of week two will see a better Contador. Contador can limit his losses on Ventoux to get *A* GC podium spot. But, I think that's the best case scenario.

Worst case scenario for Froome is he loses some time and retakes the GC later. There's certainly opportunity following Ventoux to do so. It is a common strategy. Froome has much more power than his nearest rival. That's the likely winner of the race.

IMHO, Brailsford knows all this. Up thread, someone commented Sky's plans fall apart when the unplanned occurs. I agree. I'm hoping there are unplanned elements tomorrow and days to follow.
 
TheBean said:
If you listen to everyone's predictions, thereis sure to be a correct one in the bunch.

Predicting Omega and Belkin would attack makes sense given the talents of their teams. Contador read their move correctly and added to it. Froome missed out completely. He sure seems to be looking down a LOT.

In the post-race interview with Cav, he stated he did more watts to bridge to the move than he did in the finishing sprint.

Froome got caught napping. I would hardly blame that on the DS.

It had nothing to do with Contador - it was Mick Rogers that decided to go on the attack. He asked Contador if he wanted to do it and he agreed.
 
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argyllflyer said:
It had nothing to do with Contador - it was Mick Rogers that decided to go on the attack. He asked Contador if he wanted to do it and he agreed.

Wrong, Saxo gathered the intelligence, Mauduit briefed the team, Nico suggested it on the road, Rogers conferred, Alberto gave the order, 'Benna go', all in the space of a few seconds.
 
About the crosswind. Before the crosswind stage there was an interview with Froome on Eurosport where he talked about all the things EBH was good at and would be missed or something. One of the things that stuck out that I remember, was crosswind.

I think EBH would have sensed something was up and got Froome to safety had he been there.

As for sky, something being wrong with their training setup seems like a good explanation. Perhaps their head coach had a good idea for how to train better, and it has totally backfired.

Tactics are one thing, but your riders need to have the strength to carry things out. I think that is one of skys problems.

As for who else should have been picked, we don't really know what shape the others are in. If someone like Kosta is not looking strong, how strong could Eisel be?

Sky lost Kiri and EBH who seemed to be inching towards an acceptable form, while remaining they have Kosta and Lopez who up until now have been nowhere.

They are in deep sheit, and the 220km to Ventoux tomorrow will be interesting.
 
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Ryo Hazuki said:
servais knaven if you eve rlooked or listened at him you know he has no persoanlity. braislford will outscream him in the teamcar for sure and change tactics, which he doesn't understand. sunderland even left because of this and de jongh a few days ago in dutch tv said things would go wrong when he started interfering. so let's all be grateful for brailsford and the inept idiot that he is
The same happened in that 'second Pyrennee' stage. Panic freaks. That Brailsford should just stay in his office in Manchester.

But to be fair, Portal and Knaven are a bunch of woozies. Sorry, couldnt find another word for 'sukkels'. No charisma what so ever.

If Bernie Eisel would have been there the other day that Saxo Putsch would have been foreseen. But hey, he aint Brit, only at the Olympics of course :D
 

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