Team Sky can achieve even more in next five years, says Dave Brailsford

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jan/11/team-sky-dave-brailsford-cycling

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Sir Dave Brailsford believes Team Sky can be even more successful in the next five years of their development than during their first five – and plans to exploit the latest Silicon Valley technology and big data to get there. “Our mission for 2020 is very simple – for Team Sky to be indisputably and consistently the best cycling team in the world, and to be viewed as one of the very best sports teams in the world,” he said. “It is in our DNA to think we could have achieved more in the first five years. And now we are hungrier than ever.”

As mission statements go, it is not only emphatic but potentially hubristic. Then again, Brailsford has form. Five years ago this week, when Team Sky were unveiled at Millbank Tower on a grubby London day, Brailsford set himself two targets: to win the Tour de France within five years and to get a million more people on bikes in Britain. In both measures he has overachieved. Yet he remains forever restless: still itching to discover more, still itching to make Team Sky the alpha males of the peloton again.

Hence the heightened focus on hi-tech when he spoke on Sunday at the team’s winter training camp in Mallorca. “The advances in technology and human applications are just exploding,” he says. “There are certain areas where it is becoming obvious that there are gains to be made and so we’re working pretty hard on that. I’m off to San Francisco in a couple of weeks and I’ve got my fingers in quite a few pies over there to get abreast of all the latest technologies and see how we can apply those to our sport.”

Sky are believed to be concentrating on finding new ways to improve rider recovery but Brailsford would not be drawn on specifics. As he put it, with a twinkle in his eye: “We’ve done pretty well helping other cycling teams out over the last five years”. When pressed, however, he did admit: “Big data is an obvious area where there is a lot of work going on, in football and American sports, and we have a lot of data in different areas. That’s a great area of interest to us.”

Five-year plans. Embracing technology. It has a whiff of Harold Wilson’s “white heat of technology” plans about it. It is also bold given that 2014 hardly went to plan. Chris Froome crashed in the Dauphiné Libéré and in the Tour de France; the team’s No2, Richie Porte, fell ill in Tirreno-Adriatico and contracted pneumonia in the Tour; Geraint Thomas crashed on the penultimate day in Paris-Nice when second – and, as Brailsford admitted, the team were not as consistent as they wanted to be either.

But Brailsford is not one to apply balm to old bruises. “How we think about it is this – it’s not failure so don’t get downhearted about it,” he said. “This is an opportunity to learn how to win more. You’ve got to be hungry, you’ve got to have the desire and motivation to get up and believe you can go and do something again.”

In terms of targets for the next five years, Brailsford believes there is a broader spectrum of races the team can win. “When people look back at the last five years they will say that we were fantastic at stage-racing but we haven’t fared that well in one-day races.”

That is indisputable. Sky have never won one of the Monuments, the five most prestigious one-day classics on the calendar, although Ben Swift was third in Milan-San Remo last year and they had two top-10 finishers in Paris-Roubaix. As Brailsford concedes: “We can become a more complete team.”

Brailsford has a spycatcher’s attention to detail, so it comes as no surprise that in Team Sky’s hotel in Mallorca there are antimicrobial hand sanitisers on every dining table and bottles of water on every floor. But there is a human side to him too, and he says he detects that Froome’s hunger switch is on again after a mixed 2014.

“When you go through a massive life-changing experience like that, you win the Tour de France, you go in and it’s such a big experience, that’s going to impact anybody,” he said. “And you try and support people through that. And now he’s happy in his skin, as it were. He says: ‘Right, I’ve won the Tour, we know what we need to do, let’s go and give it another crack.’”

Brailsford has also noted that Froome is growing into his role as team leader. “The amount of respect he’s got from other riders in terms of his leadership ability is off the scale, they love him,” he says.

“The way, for example, in the Vuelta when he’s suffering and he’s riding back up and he’s getting dropped again and he rides back up. He refused to give in and he refused to quit and he suffered and suffered and suffered. The riders see that, they see the suffering that he does, as it were. They respect him.

“And the way that he’s always very grateful to them, he appreciates their help. He communicates well, they’ve got a lot of respect for him.”

Froome, meanwhile, agrees that he is “a lot hungrier and eager to get back” and has set his sights on the Ruta del Sol, Tirreno-Adriatico and Flèche Wallonne as he builds up to regain the Tour de France in July. “I don’t want to say ‘make right’ for last year but it definitely leaves me hungry, leaves me wanting to achieve more,” he said.

Froome believes that with the signing of Nicolas Roche, Leopold Konig and Wout Poels, Sky have the best team in their history. “I really do think this year we have an amazing pool of riders to select the Tour team,” he said. “I would go as far as to say it’s the strongest all-round team we’ve had.”

Brailsford, however, believes the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. “How do you define strongest team given we’ve won the Tour de France twice?” he asked. “I think the analysis ultimately is in the outcome. But ultimately, in terms of pure talent and ability, we’ve got some great strength in depth. If it’s on top form I think it would be the strongest team. It’s been a lot of fun to be around. It’s a great group dynamic. So in that respect, it could be the best team we’ve ever had.”

Brailsford has no regrets about stepping down from his role with British Cycling to focus on Team Sky last April. Most mornings in Mallorca he is out after breakfast, when the morning mists are still strangling the palm trees, to ride his bike before his riders begin their training.

“I’ve been away more since I stopped that dual role than I was before,” he adds, smiling. “I wasn’t expecting that. It’s a clear focus now and it certainly feels after the first five years that we are starting a new chapter. It really does. There’s an energy. Everybody’s hungry. It’s like we are starting all over again. It feels fantastic, to be honest, it’s really exciting.”