STAGE 6
INTRODUCTION BY DAVE BRAILSFORD
Coming into Paris in the dark to seal our second successive Tour de France victory was different, that’s for sure – a special moment to savour. It was a brilliant story last year when Bradley Wiggins became the first Briton to win the greatest prize in cycling, but to return with a different leader and win in consecutive years, in the historic 100th edition of the race, created a deep sense of achievement for everyone at Team Sky.
From the outside, those three weeks that Chris Froome ultimately dominated might have looked controlled, but from the inside they felt pretty epic. After the first Pyrenean stage, during which strong teamwork enabled Chris to show his superiority, something dramatic happened every single day. There was a tremendous sense of pride for the behind-the-scenes staff in witnessing the spectacle when the riders crossed the line with linked arms on the Champs-Élysées. Going on a Grand Tour means living together 24/7 for almost four weeks. It’s like a soap opera, with a real sense of shared endeavour and camaraderie. After being in that kind of rhythm, it was wonderful to celebrate the magnitude of the occasion as a team.
In 2010 we launched Team Sky as a professional road-racing outfit with the aim of a clean British rider winning the Tour de France within five years. I said last year that you couldn’t script a more perfect way of realising this ambition than that moment on Sunday 22 July 2012, when Mark Cavendish won on the Champs-Elysées, led out by his team-mate Bradley Wiggins in the yellow jersey. That milestone Tour triumph came together in just three years, and for the team now to have done it twice – and to witness Chris Froome standing on the podium in the centenary edition alongside fivetimes winners Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain – is amazing.
There is a deep sense of community among the Team Sky outfit. As a team we worked on a very refined model in 2012, bound by our philosophy. This year we tried to scale that up and have a broader service provision so that we could have a good go at the other Grand Tours – the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España. Before the season starts you look at 27 riders. Each Grand Tour only needs nine riders. The trick is to optimise resources against the goals we’ve set. Bradley’s goal for 2013 was to win the Giro. Chris’s sole objective was the Tour de France. You make plans a long way out and sometimes life gets in the way, but we put in a dynamic framework that allows us to amend plans if necessary.
We went to the Giro with pre-race speculation bubbling about whether it would be Vincenzo Nibali or Bradley first or second in Brescia. After Bradley’s unfortunate withdrawal through illness, we still achieved second on the podium with Plan B and Rigoberto Urán, which was a terrific result.
