Wiggo admits that 4th place was a fluke?

[shouldawouldacoulda]

Wiggins should be applauded for his honesty and hunility. He isn't making any kind of lame excuse.

He mentioned that it took him years to perfect his training program for the track pursuit. That event lasts a few miinutes.

He also mentioned that he intends to change his program for next year's TdF. Given his performance, I would call that a smart choice.

As for Sky's investment, there is always a risk when sponsoring an athlete. I would suggest Sky has gotten a good return given the magazine spreads and other exposure Wiggans has brought. At least he hasn't been implicated as a cheater, gotten into a fight, been a whiny loser, or anything else that could tarnish the image of a sponsor.

+1. Great insights.

 

[erader]

I actually give Wiggins a lot of respect for his self awareness. He has always been quite honest like that.

it's the addict personality. his mouth runs amok in either direction. remember all the smack he talked after the last tour? much of the expectation that was created was due to his own mouth. i'll bet vaughters is feeling pretty good about now .

erader

 

[Rob_Roy]

lovkkvist is 26 and can't do anything past 1 week. he's overrated beyon even brajkovic.

It all depends who you compare him with of course...

If you compare him to Contador,well in that case I have to say that everyone in the peleton has a lot to learn,but it wouldnt be that fun to just see Contador in the race right?
We need some kids to fill the other spots as well.

 

[Jamsque]

I am a massive and unashamed Wiggins fanboy, and credit to him for being frank about his performance at this tour, but god damn if six million over four years isn't starting to look like a mistake on the part of Brailsford. I think Sky needs to swallow a tough pill over this off-season and try to re-purpose Wiggo as a classics/stage winning kind of rider and maybe re-coup some of that loss with a TdF stage win at some point in the next few years.

 

[Tyler'sTwin]

Lol and how much money has Sky invested in him and lovkvist?? the 2 biggest failures.

Are you having a laugh!? Wiggins is a big failure, yes, but Löfkvist is the opposite. The guy has never been top 40 at the tour and his best ever result in a GT is 25th at the giro last year. Now he's 16th at the Tour with 3 of the 5 toughest mountain stages behind the peloton and would be top 15 without some bad luck. Who the f*** expected him to perform better than that!? Certainly not Sky and I really doubt he's on a big wage.

 

[Freddythefrog]

Where some of the small change should have been spent.

I am a massive and unashamed Wiggins fanboy, and credit to him for being frank about his performance at this tour, but god damn if six million over four years isn't starting to look like a mistake on the part of Brailsford. I think Sky needs to swallow a tough pill over this off-season and try to re-purpose Wiggo as a classics/stage winning kind of rider and maybe re-coup some of that loss with a TdF stage win at some point in the next few years.

+1
Like others in this thread, I actually admire him for his honesty. What grates is the money spent on the GB men when the GB women are living on nothing. Brailsford could have made a killing with the GB women, Cooke, Pooley, Laws Armisted and a few others on the same team. It would have been awesome. Then, if the men did not quite live up to expectation he could point at the women's team. It would have cost him the small change from the budget. Hope he does it next year.

 

[euanli]

I think a lot of the GB women do not want to work with Cooke.

 

[Yossarian12]

Garmin Syndrome

I think it is a terrible mistake for a newly formed team to aim straight for the biggest prize of them all. Instead of Wigans with all the misplaced GC hopes, they should have gone after Cavendish. Yeah, stage wins and green jersey might mean less publicity, but if you screw up sometimes (which you invariably will as a new team) there's always a new chance tomorrow for a sprinter. This should get you over the first 1-2 years with sufficient success and gained experience that you can start to think bigger.

Good insight! Garmin had it right going into the first year looking for breaks and maybe a stage. But then they went all out on GC to the detriment of Farrar last year, and now they are doing it again by pushing Ryder's GC hopes, when he should be chasing stages (Friday was a good stage for him, but he blew @ the foot of the Jalabert).

New teams should shoot for stages or the lesser jerseys. At a minimum they should put riders in the breaks to get that air time for sponsors.

Finally, guys like Wiggans and VdV were clear GC risks whose sights should be
1- Stage Victory
2- Top ten
3- podium
4- overall

in that order

 

[WildspokeJoe]

"You need to be at Manchester United, but I'm playing at Wigan. I've had a good time at Garmin, but times have changed."

Ooops.

Garmin is having a better tour than Sky.

 

[LugHugger]

I think it is a terrible mistake for a newly formed team to aim straight for the biggest prize of them all. Instead of Wigans with all the misplaced GC hopes, they should have gone after Cavendish. Yeah, stage wins and green jersey might mean less publicity, but if you screw up sometimes (which you invariably will as a new team) there's always a new chance tomorrow for a sprinter. This should get you over the first 1-2 years with sufficient success and gained experience that you can start to think bigger.

Do you? If you had checked, the aim is for the 'biggest prize of them all' in 2015. Brailsford is a long-term planner and is realistic about the timescales required to deliver the Tour. He made sure that the sponsors knew about the implementation plan and duration whilst setting the project up.

Bradley Wiggins has a four year contract ie to the end of the 2014 season. His role is to ride for the GC in the Tour during that period, to help establish Sky as a contender, enable the team to secure more Tour potential and to nurture emerging talent such as Boassen Hagen, Thomas, Stannard and Kennaugh.

To introduce Cavendish to this mix would be to dilute attention from the core strategy. The talent of Boassen Hagen at the very least would depart because of this and Boassen Hagen has much greater potential out of the two. Brailsford knows this. Cavendish's inability to control his mouth and lack of maturity is also another factor in not endearing him to the media-savvy Sky management.

I would also like to know how you switch from being a sprint orientated team in years 1-3 to being focussed on delivering the tour in year 5. How has this worked out for teams that have tried this in the past? Lotto?

It was perhaps inevitable that Wiggins would not finish as high as last year given the increased competition in this years field and the more testing parcours in 2010. Many people did not believe that Wiggins could repeat. Of course, there are no guarantees that 2015 will deliver the result but I'm sure that Brailsford is very happy with how the first 6 months of a 5 year plan have gone so far.

 

[turtlesoup]

"You need to be at Manchester United, but I'm playing at Wigan. I've had a good time at Garmin, but times have changed."

Ooops.

Garmin is having a better tour than Sky.

not really, both have a handful of podium finishes each with GC riders in 10-20. Both were expecting more, but garmin with mixed goals and Sky in their first year they were certainly searching for more than they should have been. Garmin should have been 100% for Farrar and let CVV go off on his own with Ryder for help. Sky should have focused on stage wins and got their tour legs under them. the vuelta would have been a far better goal for them as far as big GC goes.

 

[The Hitch]

Add wiggins to the long list of people who have underperformed this season, and who in looking for the next gt where they can make ammends have to wait till vuelta 2011, as vuelta 2010 is too early to recover from tdf, giro 2011 will likely have contador and many good italians in top shape, and tdf 2011, well its the tdf so competition will be to fierce.

And after vuelta, alejandro valverde will be coming back with a vengence.

List so far :

Cadel Evans
Bradely Wiggins
Roman Kreuziger
Janez Brajkovic

 

[Cobblestones]

Do you? If you had checked, the aim is for the 'biggest prize of them all' in 2015. Brailsford is a long-term planner and is realistic about the timescales required to deliver the Tour. He made sure that the sponsors knew about the implementation plan and duration whilst setting the project up.

Bradley Wiggins has a four year contract ie to the end of the 2014 season. His role is to ride for the GC in the Tour during that period, to help establish Sky as a contender, enable the team to secure more Tour potential and to nurture emerging talent such as Boassen Hagen, Thomas, Stannard and Kennaugh.

To introduce Cavendish to this mix would be to dilute attention from the core strategy. The talent of Boassen Hagen at the very least would depart because of this and Boassen Hagen has much greater potential out of the two. Brailsford knows this. Cavendish's inability to control his mouth and lack of maturity is also another factor in not endearing him to the media-savvy Sky management.

I would also like to know how you switch from being a sprint orientated team in years 1-3 to being focussed on delivering the tour in year 5. How has this worked out for teams that have tried this in the past? Lotto?

It was perhaps inevitable that Wiggins would not finish as high as last year given the increased competition in this years field and the more testing parcours in 2010. Many people did not believe that Wiggins could repeat. Of course, there are no guarantees that 2015 will deliver the result but I'm sure that Brailsford is very happy with how the first 6 months of a 5 year plan have gone so far.

You see, I thought the whole premise was wrong: we'll win the TdF within 5 years? Yeah, right. I'd say, get your team going and win something first. The easiest to do that is with a sprinter. The point is not that Cavendish doesn't fit in, the point is that the whole Wigans/TdF strategy is flawed. For the money spent (and the money which is tied up by Wigans in the future), there's very little in terms of results. A sprinters team on the other hand, built around Cavendish, would have paid out much better by now. And that wasn't very hard to predict even a year ago.

About the transition to a TdF winning team. :shrug: we can talk about that when a real British contender comes along. Telekom did a decent job with Ullrich and Zabel btw. if you're looking for past examples.

 

[Andrichuk]

I don't think it was a fluke. Last year was the perfect tour for him. It was expected that he wouldn't do as good this year.

 

[Mambo95]

Add wiggins to the long list of people who have underperformed this season, and who in looking for the next gt where they can make ammends have to wait till vuelta 2011, as vuelta 2010 is too early to recover from tdf, giro 2011 will likely have contador and many good italians in top shape, and tdf 2011, well its the tdf so competition will be to fierce.

And after vuelta, alejandro valverde will be coming back with a vengence.

List so far :

Cadel Evans
Bradely Wiggins
Roman Kreuziger
Janez Brajkovic

Cadel Evans hasn't underperformed. He's No.1 on the UCI rankings.

 

[PCutter]

If you read the article closely, Wiggins is saying that arriving in peak form (not his final position) last year was a fluke as his training schedule wasn't designed to deliver him at peak form for a GT contender, but just a race/training schedule for someone with other targets. He then turned up at the Tour with limited expectations only to find himself with good legs. Im neither a Wiggo lover or hater, I just think a lot of people on this thread have missed the point of his quote.

Add wiggins to the long list of people who have underperformed this season, and who in looking for the next gt where they can make ammends have to wait till vuelta 2011, as vuelta 2010 is too early to recover from tdf, giro 2011 will likely have contador and many good italians in top shape, and tdf 2011, well its the tdf so competition will be to fierce.

And after vuelta, alejandro valverde will be coming back with a vengence.

List so far :

Cadel Evans
Bradely Wiggins
Roman Kreuziger
Janez Brajkovic

You are kidding yourself. As someone above pointed out, Cadel is ranked #1 on the UCI, won Fleche, won probably the more memorable stage of the Giro, finished it 5th, held the yellow jersey, and rode a great ride on the cobbelled stage of the tour.

No one had really even heard of Brajkovic before this year and now he's won a prestigous stage race. Of course he's hasn't performed at the tour, he wasn't there to perform, he was there to support his leader, which he has done, but his leader has changed, and its a little much to expect him to be the super domestique you think he should be in his first tour when you have guys like Klodi on the same team.

Kreuziger has also had to ride for his leader, Basso, but would be a little disappointed in his individual performance - but he's still collecting biddons for Basso on the climbs, not exactly conducive to personal attacks at the end of HC finishes.

Wiggo has been disappointing to himself, and no doubt his fans. But its a tough race, so if you're off your game by a couple of % its going to show.

 

[rxgqgxnyfz]

No one had really even heard of Brajkovic before this year and now he's won a prestigous stage race.

Kind of off-topic, but actually Brajkovic has been continuously showing a great form (in Giro mostly) and he was VERY visible even in such a leader breaking team as Discovery (YES, he has been riding for THAT long).
________
Pornstars aline

 

[shouldawouldacoulda]

Kind of off-topic, but actually Brajkovic has been continuously showing a great form (in Giro mostly) and he was VERY visible even in such a leader breaking team as Discovery (YES, he has been riding for THAT long).

I agree with this. Brajkovic has been around a while... since 2005 and in 2007 he won the Tour of Georgia in the US - so he didn't come out of nowhere.

In his final season as a U23 he was 2nd in the season's UCI standings... behind Thomas Dekker! He was only 21 at the time. I remember there being quite a bit of buzz about him when he signed for Disco in '05

If anything, you could say he hasn't lived up the expectations people had of him when he turned pro.

 

[Moose McKnuckles]

Kind of off-topic, but actually Brajkovic has been continuously showing a great form (in Giro mostly) and he was VERY visible even in such a leader breaking team as Discovery (YES, he has been riding for THAT long).

I think he held the jersey in the Vuelta for a few days as well.

 

[woodburn]

Well, you can say that Astana soft-pedalled in the mountains, but Verbier, for instance, had a fastest VAM in the history of the Tour climbs. And Wiggins was actually pretty good on that stage.

He was very good but that stage had only one smaller climb beforehand. Same with Arcalis. He struggled at Grand Bornand with multiple climbs and has done the same this year.

 

[shouldawouldacoulda]

I think he held the jersey in the Vuelta for a few days as well.

Yup, in the 2006 Vuelta.

 

[LugHugger]

You see, I thought the whole premise was wrong: we'll win the TdF within 5 years? Yeah, right. I'd say, get your team going and win something first. The easiest to do that is with a sprinter. The point is not that Cavendish doesn't fit in, the point is that the whole Wigans/TdF strategy is flawed. For the money spent (and the money which is tied up by Wigans in the future), there's very little in terms of results. A sprinters team on the other hand, built around Cavendish, would have paid out much better by now. And that wasn't very hard to predict even a year ago.

About the transition to a TdF winning team. :shrug: we can talk about that when a real British contender comes along. Telekom did a decent job with Ullrich and Zabel btw. if you're looking for past examples.

I totally agree that the money invested in Wiggins is disproportionate to his potential return and comparative return from the rest of the squad. The whole Garmin contract affair was very poorly handled by Sky and Wiggins although I'm sure JV now feels that he got the best result looking at how 2010 has panned out. But, the return on investment will be measured over longer than the first 6 months by Sky management.

Given that Cavendish did not want to leave HTC, the speculation over his phantom results at Sky in 2010 is irrelevant. Sky is largely UK orientated in its outlook, I'm afraid that winning a few sprints would not deliver the 'pay out' that you are assuming if success is measured in 'wins'. Speak to most people in the UK about cycling and even last year, Cav's 6 stage victories was greeted with a shrug and a comment of 'So, is he going to win?' Sponsors and management are not pandering to cycling fans in the UK and US markets, the sport is too small in comparison with soccer or football. Success can and will only be measured by winning the biggest events and the exposure garnered from these and not by a few sprint results.

BTW, FWIW I don't think that Sky have a cat in hell's chance of winning the Tour by 2015 but I'm prepared to wait to judge them!

 

[simoni]

I totally agree that the money invested in Wiggins is disproportionate to his potential return and comparative return from the rest of the squad. The whole Garmin contract affair was very poorly handled by Sky and Wiggins although I'm sure JV now feels that he got the best result looking at how 2010 has panned out. But, the return on investment will be measured over longer than the first 6 months by Sky management.

Given that Cavendish did not want to leave HTC, the speculation over his phantom results at Sky in 2010 is irrelevant. Sky is largely UK orientated in its outlook, I'm afraid that winning a few sprints would not deliver the 'pay out' that you are assuming if success is measured in 'wins'. Speak to most people in the UK about cycling and even last year, Cav's 6 stage victories was greeted with a shrug and a comment of 'So, is he going to win?' Sponsors and management are not pandering to cycling fans in the UK and US markets, the sport is too small in comparison with soccer or football. Success can and will only be measured by winning the biggest events and the exposure garnered from these and not by a few sprint results.

BTW, FWIW I don't think that Sky have a cat in hell's chance of winning the Tour by 2015 but I'm prepared to wait to judge them!

Here in Britain, you have to understand that all average Joe knows of cycling is the Olympic track team and a vague awareness of Mark Cavendish. This means Brad Wiggins, Chris Hoy, Rebecca Romero, Victoria Pendleton. Sky HAD to have a big British name and Wiggins was the only one who fit the bill for a road team since Cav was not available. He knew this and took advantage and who could blame him - it was a signing more about publicity than sport. Given that he'd finished 4th last year they could market him as the great white GC hope even if they didn't necessarily believe it from a sporting point of view.

Elsewhere, there will be plenty of other riders earning above their station because of who they are - someone like McEwan springs to mind because people talk about him and he's media savvy. Similarly, Cunego will be on a huge wage because we think of him as the former giro winner and he appears on Italian TV whenever he gets dropped.

FWIW I think Sky have made things hard for themselves generally by not signing up a good sprinter and by their overly arrogant approach. Right from the start it has seemed more about style than substance (I suppose being sponsored by Sky we shouldn't be surprised...) but I suppose that's the publicity angle coming through again. As a cycling fan, I want to hear more about how they are knucking down and working to improve (but please don't talk marginal gains...) and less about the bus and the iPhones. New teams don't just march in and dominate and I hope we see a better sporting return for the money next year.

 

[Timmy-loves-Rabo]

look, wiggo benefited from a rather 'easy course' last year. I can't ever see the guy being competitive on a tough course like this year.

A lot of last year's top ten is case in point.

 

[ingsve]

FWIW I think Sky have made things hard for themselves generally by not signing up a good sprinter and by their overly arrogant approach.

So are you implying that "good sprinter" only includes the top 5 sprinters in the world or something? Henderson is certainly not a bad sprinter. He's not as fast as Cav, Farrar or Petacchi but few sprinters are. He's easily good enough to consistently place in the top 10 in the sprints in this tour. I would say that he's roughly at the level of Rojas, Turgot, Hushovd (at least in this years form) and Ciolek.

Other than that they also have Sutton, EBH, Swift and Downing who have all won bunch sprints this year so it's a bit unfair to them to say they don't have a good sprinter.