Team Ineos (Formerly the Sky thread)

[Ryo Hazuki]

Wiggins assertion that he had to go to Sky to get the team and equipment necessary to win the Tour makes no sense whatsoever. Slipstream was loaded with climbers and time trialers, several of whom had finished top ten in GTs. Sky was putting together a team suited for classics and one day races.

He is lying.

hahaha, pathetic even by your standards

 

[RownhamHill]

I thought i would help those who were paywalled.

one year later article by kimmage

Here

I can't read this. It's pay-walled.

 

[Alphabet]

I can't read this. It's pay-walled.

Here you go. Apologies for the length:

Wiggins’ Sky blues

Team Sky's lead rider has always had the legs but will need the head of a general at this month’s Tour de France

Paul Kimmage Published: 3 July 2011

It’s Friday night in Les Herbiers on the eve of the Tour de France and three reporters are sitting in the press room, studying a lap-top and scratching their heads: Bradley Wiggins has just posted a quote from Sir Winston Churchill on Twitter.

“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hasn’t he been talking all week about the process and not the result?”

“Yeah, he said it again at the press conference yesterday.”

“Wait! He’s posted another: “The more reasons you have for achieving your goal, the more determined you will become. Brian Tracy”

“Sounds like a slogan on one of those cheap postcards you see with the chimpanzee and the mouth organ.”

“Who’s Brian Tracy?”

“Isn’t he a Thunderbird?”

“I think he’s one of those ‘life’ coaches.” They Google him: Brian Tracy is chairman and chief executive of Brian Tracy International, a company specialising in the training and development of individuals and organisations.

“It says here that he has helped over five million people achieve their goals.”

“Only $197 for a set of CDs!”

“And what about his books: Change Your Thinking Change Your Life; Get Paid More and Promoted Faster; Getting Rich Your Own Way?”

“Yeah, that sounds like something Bradley would read.”

There's an old French expression of what a great racer needs: La tete et les jambes (The head and the legs). Wiggins has always had les jambes but for some time now, his tete has been a source of fascination.

The month is July 2009. He is speeding over the cobbles on the Champs Elysees and about to finish fourth in the Tour de France. Up front, his Garmin-Slipstream teammates are driving the peloton and preparing the final sprint for their specialist, Tyler Farrar.

Christian Vande Velde leads the line and then David Millar takes over, setting a furious pace until the final kilometre before handing the relay to Wiggins. But there’s a problem. Wiggins has gone missing and left the final lead-out man, Julian Dean, with too much to do to launch Farrar. Mark Cavendish wins for Columbia-HTC. Millar is furious.

In Racing Through The Dark, a brilliant and absorbing autobiography, Millar writes: “It was the one day Brad was asked to give something back to the team, after we’d given him everything for three weeks. Yet I felt he hadn’t even tried and had remained about 80 places back in the middle of the bunch, without even telling us he wasn’t going to help.”

The month is December 2009. Wiggins is standing in the centre of the Manchester Velodrome, talking to Richard Moore of The Guardian. For months now, since the Tour, he has been griping about speculation that he is to break his contract with Garmin and join Team Sky. “I’m staying with Garmin,” he tells Moore. “Once we’re into January, and it’s apparent I’m still with Garmin, everything will settle down. You’ll see.” Five days later, at a press conference, Wiggins is unveiled by his new team.

The month is June 2010. He is sitting in a room of an airport hotel on a Friday afternoon, talking to his wife on the phone. He has spent the week in the Alps and Pyrenees, reconnoitring the climbs and preparing for the Tour. Richard Stanton, a photographer from The Sunday Times, has been following him in a car for two days but needs a portrait shot before he can go home. “No problem,” Wiggins agrees, on Thursday morning.

But Friday has gone badly and now he’s in a mood. He deploys his coach, Rod Ellingworth, to relay the news. “He’s tired,” Ellingworth explains. “He says he’ll do it in the morning.” Stanton is up early the next morning and sets up his lights and cameras in a bedroom. “It will take five minutes,” he assures Ellingworth. “I’m just going to stand him against the wall and ask him to take off his shirt.”

But Wiggins has changed his mind. “He says he doesn’t want to do it,” Ellingworth explains. “He hasn’t shaved.” A year on, Stanton spits blood at the mention of Wiggins’ name.

So does Millar. On Tuesday, in an interview with The Guardian, he said: “We [the Garmin team] made him. We basically rode him into that fourth place finish in the Tour de France. It was not a one-man show. It was a team effort. He wouldn’t have hit the top 10 if he’d been on any other team so that’s why I was so p***** off with him. He never once gave us the respect we deserved. Mark Cavendish understands the game — Brad doesn’t. He’s a natural-born leader, Cav, whereas Brad has no leadership skills.”

Wiggins’ frailties at the helm of Team Sky were cruelly exposed twice last season: first, with a meltdown at Le Tour; then, more alarmingly, with a calamitous performance at the Tour of Britain in September. “Where did they get their tactics?” a rival team director asked. “Benny Hill?”

It was Wiggins’ last race of the season. He opted to skip the October world championships and was at home with his feet up when Millar — who had raced all three Grand Tours — finished second in Wiggins’ speciality, the time trial. That night he received a call from a furious David Brailsford, Team Sky’s principal. Three days later, he was summoned to Manchester. “I got a severe rollicking and I deserved it,” Wiggins says. “The way I was behaving after last year’s Tour de France, the way I was racing as a team leader, was just so far away from what it should have been it was unbelievable.” Question for Brailsford: Why was he indulged for so long?

Wiggins is high maintenance. Three weeks ago, after the time trial at the Criteriuim de Dauphine, he complained that none of the carers had waited at the finish. “You said you were going straight to the bus,” they replied.

He wants a bottle, then changes his mind. They fill it with X and he wants Y. Sean Yates, a former Tour de France yellow jersey, is a team director at Sky. “There’s never a dull moment with Brad,” he says. “You’re either laughing your head off or tearing your hair out. Or both at the same time.”

Shane Sutton, another Team Sky director, is his most trusted confidant. “He needs to be loved, bolstered, encouraged, rollicked. The key is understanding when to adopt each approach.” Wiggins insists he has changed. “Last year I had a long look in the mirror,” he said recently to the cycling journalist Lionel Birnie. “I wasn’t leading the team in any sense. I was quite withdrawn. You only have to look at the interviews at the Tour and post-Tour ... I wouldn’t say I was moody because that isn’t how I felt at the time, but I could come across as moody. I was a little bit defensive at times. I was at the centre of this team but I felt completely alone. That’s not a nice place to be.

“I had a long, hard look at myself and changed a lot of the things about myself that I felt I needed to change. I let people start to help me a bit more. It snowballed to the point where I feel confident to lead this team. I feel confident telling the guys what to do. I’d have loved to have done that last year but I just couldn’t.

“I remember at the [team] presentation in London, I asked to stand at the back. I didn’t want to stand at the front. I wanted to be presented in the mix and stand at the back of the photos. I said, ‘I don’t want the other guys thinking I’m the leader’. They said, ‘Well, you are the leader’.”

His performances this year — third in Paris-Nice, stage win at Bayern Rundfahrt, winner of the Dauphine, British road race champion — have been outstanding and he starts the Tour in the form of his life. He has les jambes to be top five.

Does he have la tete? The jury is out.

On Thursday at the Team Sky press conference, the new Bradley Wiggins sounded confident and assured until a question in the 14th minute. “What exactly have you changed in your training from last year to this year? And why now should the fans believe that a podium in Paris is possible?”

“I don’t think the fans should believe anything,” he replied. “I think they’re your expectations and goals, talking about podiums. I don’t think I’ve mentioned the podium once this season.” And suddenly you were reminded of the old Bradley Wiggins and a response he gave last week when asked the same question in London: “The top 10 seems more than achievable, but all of a sudden getting on the podium seems achievable.”

Tune in. The quest will be fascinating.

I got rid of some of the spacing between paragraphs so it wouldn't be quite so long.

 

[JimmyFingers]

I got rid of some of the spacing between paragraphs so it wouldn't be quite so long.

Good read, ta

 

[BroDeal]

hahaha, pathetic even by your standards

Yeah, we all saw how awesome Sky was at the 2010 Tour. Garmin got its usual top ten while Sky's tactics throughout the season were being compared to those of Benny Hill.

 

[BroDeal]

To be a British leader of an ambitious British team, closely linked to the track set up Brad was already part of? Seems a logical and natural choice, and very far from the 'went there for the juice' spin you are insinuating.

If that is why he went then he should say just that. Instead he is slinging the lies about how Garmin was incapable of helping him win the Tour. It is flat out bullsh!t. Garmin had far better GT support than Sky. What is more, Garmin had experience and Sky had none. The question then become why is Wiggins lying?

 

[Wiggo Warrior]

We should both read Sky's the Limit.

Now on order along with Rough Ride, Heroes Villains & Velos, David Millar's and Wiggo's first

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Wiggins assertion that he had to go to Sky to get the team and equipment necessary to win the Tour makes no sense whatsoever. Slipstream was loaded with climbers and time trialers, several of whom had finished top ten in GTs. Sky was putting together a team suited for classics and one day races.

He is lying.

He may not have been lying, just that he was taken in by the vision at Sky, and of course with their stated policy he was naturally going to be the man for them, whereas at Garmin there would be competition for the leadership role on a greater level. He could have worded it better as it seemed a bit disrespectful of the talent at Garmin when it comes to GTs, however. It should certainly be borne in mind that Garmin won a GT before Sky did.

 

[Fearless Greg Lemond]

If that is why he went then he should say just that. Instead he is slinging the lies about how Garmin was incapable of helping him win the Tour. It is flat out bullsh!t. Garmin had far better GT support than Sky. What is more, Garmin had experience and Sky had none. The question then become why is Wiggins lying?

When Team SKY was launched they were inmediately labelled as 'dreamteam' by the cycling press. Really, never understood that at all.

When you take a look at the 2010 roster http://www.cyclingarchives.com/ploegfiche.php?id=16064 I see Flecha and uhhhhh, that's about it. So, indeed, where is that GT winning roster Brad is talking of?

PR mumbojumbo.

 

[BroDeal]

When Team SKY was launched they were inmediately labelled as 'dreamteam' by the cycling press. Really, never understood that at all.

When you take a look at the 2010 roster http://www.cyclingarchives.com/ploegfiche.php?id=16064 I see Flecha and uhhhhh, that's about it. So, indeed, where is that GT winning roster Brad is talking of?

Exactly. Ryo has his head too far up his ass to acknowledge it. That 2010 Sky team was built for one-day races not GTs. If Sky's goal was truly the Tour then they would not have hired Cav. Sky's support for Wiggins is built on Froome, a rider so iffy in 2011 that Sky did not even offer him a contract extension before the 2011 Vuelta.

Going to 2010 Sky while saying you need the team to succeed at the Tour makes no sense.

 

[Don't be late Pedro]

Going to 2010 Sky while saying you need the team to succeed at the Tour makes no sense.

Seems to make perfect sense now since Wiggins (and Sky) have won the Tour and Garmin have not.

Perhaps unlike you he looked at the long term prospects of the teams. Sky were (are) cash rich and could easily have made promises that they would get top quality riders in and guarantee Wiggins would be their number one rider.

Plus the pull of being leader on a British branded team and being paid a shed load of money would not have hurt.

And, I could be wrong with this but weren't Garmin struggling with sponsors (I might be thinking of HTC).

 

[BroDeal]

Seems to make perfect sense now since Wiggins (and Sky) have won the Tour and Garmin have not.

It helps when the team hires dope doctors, a rider has a transformation that would make Stephen Schumacher's head spin, and another rider performs better than he ever did when he was clients of Dr. Ferrari. I guess Garmin does not have enough marginal gains. Still they managed to win the Giro, which could be seen as the end of a stead progression rather than a magical Sky-like transformation.

Perhaps unlike you he looked at the long term prospects of the teams.

They hired Cav and his train instead, leaving the GT side of things to be built on the Kohl-like rise of Vroome.

 

[coinneach]

Here you go. Apologies for the length:



I got rid of some of the spacing between paragraphs so it wouldn't be quite so long.

Thanks a lot!

Kimmage has actually gone up in my estimation: its a sharp insightful portrait of Wiggins, warts & all.
I am reminded of the Throne he had to sit on when he won his TT gold medal.
When monarchs had their portraits painted, they didn't like the warts being in, so sensible painters left them out and got rich: great painters left them in.

The only thing I'd take issue with Kimmage is reducing doing the tour to head & legs. What Wiggins proved in 11 & 12 is that lady luck is THE most important factor.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

It helps when the team hires dope doctors, a rider has a transformation that would make Stephen Schumacher's head spin, and another rider performs better than he ever did when he was clients of Dr. Ferrari. I guess Garmin does not have enough marginal gains. Still they managed to win the Giro, which could be seen as the end of a stead progression rather than a magical Sky-like transformation.



They hired Cav and his train instead, leaving the GT side of things to be built on the Kohl-like rise of Vroome.

This is really unfair.

On Bernhard Kohl. He'd finished on the podium of the Dauphiné in 2006.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

Seems to make perfect sense now since Wiggins (and Sky) have won the Tour and Garmin have not.

What do you mean "seem".
It does make perfect sense, now!!

But it didn't make sense back on 2010.

Perhaps unlike you he looked at the long term prospects of the teams. Sky were (are) cash rich and could easily have made promises that they would get top quality riders in and guarantee Wiggins would be their number one rider.

Plus the pull of being leader on a British branded team and being paid a shed load of money would not have hurt.

And, I could be wrong with this but weren't Garmin struggling with sponsors (I might be thinking of HTC).

Back to the cash rich argument again.
Sure, they are one of the best funded teams, but unlike most other teams over the years Sky didn't buy in proven performers in GTs.

 

[BroDeal]

This is really unfair.

On Bernhard Kohl. He'd finished on the podium of the Dauphiné in 2006.

You are right. It is too hard to find a Froome equivalent.

 

[ferryman]

You are right. It is too hard to find a Froome equivalent.

You guys are simply lazy Or maybe not

Road cycling – major achievements
2005
1st Stage 2 Tour of Mauritius
2006
1st Tour of Mauritius
1st Stages 2 & 3
2nd Anatomic Jock Race
2007
1st Mi-Août Bretonne
1st Stage 5 Giro delle Regioni (Under 23s)
1st Stage 6 Tour of Japan
2nd Berg en Dale Classic
2nd World Championship Time Trial (Elite group B)
3rd All-Africa Games – 150 km road race [43]
2008
2nd Overall Giro del Capo[44]
2009
1st Day 2 Giro del Capo[45]
1st Anatomic Jock Race

 

[The Hitch]

You are right. It is too hard to find a Froome equivalent.

I just spent 4 hours searching back through cycling history going back decades, looking at rankings, videos, stats results etcetera trying to see if i could find anyone in the history of our sport who had as big a transformation as Chris Froome.

In the end i could find only one.
































Bradley Wiggins.

 

[hrotha]

You didn't look hard enough. Here's another one:


Bjarne Riis.

 

[Mrs John Murphy]

You didn't look hard enough. Here's another one:


Bjarne Riis.

Another Raimondas Rumsas.

 

[Ferminal]

"He wouldn’t have hit the top 10 if he’d been on any other team" - Millar

What a load of rubbish

 

[Dear Wiggo]

You didn't look hard enough. Here's another one:


Bjarne Riis.

Their GT rise was almost identical.

 

[BroDeal]

"He wouldn’t have hit the top 10 if he’d been on any other team" - Millar

What a load of rubbish

What other team would he have hit the top 10 on? In 2009 the long TTT eliminated everyone not on Garmin, Astana, or Saxo. Wigans would have been lucky to even have made the Tour team at Astana, and Saxo would have have supported him over the Schlecks.

 

[BroDeal]

You didn't look hard enough. Here's another one:

Bjarne Riis.

To be fair to Riis, he had served a long apprenticeship by riding as a domestique for Fignon then seeking more for himself at Gewiss-Ballan. He then focused on the Tour, which saw him win after three years.

 

[Ferminal]

Well Wiggins' form was good enough to achieve a top10 on any team. He wouldn't have lost an extra 10minutes if CVV wasn't there to pace him a couple of times. He was on the whole probably the 7th best climber in the race and top10 in both ITTs.

Unless Millar was suggesting that another team wouldn't have given him the confidence to win or something like that.