Team Sky support riders can’t control everything

Mar 11, 2013

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How much support do you need, if that isn’t too personal a question? This week we saw one of Sky’s support riders win Paris-Nice, largely because of the efforts of HIS support team, while a parallel Sky team has provided the same high level of service to Chris Froome in Tirreno-Adriatico. Where does it end? I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the guy who cleans their cycle shorts getting a full lead-out on his way to the toilet.

Third-best in first place

If Richie Porte rides the Tour, he’ll have both Froome and Wiggins ahead of him in the pecking order and yet he was strong enough to ride away for a victory on stage five of Paris-Nice and then again in the stage seven mountain time trial (finishing in much the same time as when Wiggins won on the same course last year, incidentally).

The stage five win came because Porte only had to ride a kilometre without a Sky-clad windbreak in front of him. His team-mates had protected him up until right near the end of the stage, giving him a crucial advantage over all his rivals. The very next day, Sky used the exact same tactics in Italy to help Chris Froome to a win on stage four of Tirreno-Adriatico.

Complete control?

Nah, it all went to shit today. Stage six of Tirreno-Adriatico had plenty of climbing, but not in the long, steady form that is easy to analyse and plan for. Instead, it had this kind of crap:

27% slope makes even the pro riders stop dead in the road #tirreno pic.twitter.com/yrUExn20vV

— the Inner Ring (@inrng) March 11, 2013

Up and down and up and down. A lot of riders struggled to recover from the climb you can see above and this was when Vincenzo Nibali and Peter Sagan started pulling away, Joaquim Rodriguez joining them shortly after. You can’t go off your powermeters on this kind of terrain and Froome had lost all his support as well as significant ground. This rather simplified team tactics from then on. The approach basically boiled down to: “Shit, Chris, I dunno. Do whatever you can to try and catch up.”

He never did catch up and even though I really like Chris Froome, I can’t help but feel pleased that the mathematicians lost for once. It reassures me that the Grand Tours will be races and not processions.

In other news

The Schlecks abandoned. Again.

Cycling is hard and it increasingly seems like Andy has forgotten this.

Chris Froome

Comments

10 responses to “Team Sky support riders can’t control everything”

Habib

March 11, 2013

Team sky don’t seem to have worked out a method for these more ‘classics’ style parcours. The course rewarded a bit more individualism which flummoxed the skyborgs. Saying that though it also flummoxed the TV pictures and commentators for some time, so perhaps can’t blame Sky too much. Agree with you that however much one likes Froome et al, I kind of hope some mysteries remain. Not sure that will stop them in GTs though.

Reply
1. Alex
  
  March 11, 2013
  
  Grand Tour contenders tend to target the biggest mountain stages, but Sky’s watertight tactics in those might persuade other teams to attack on some of the less taxing days.
  
  People accuse Sky of being boring, but if that happens it will enliven the race as a whole.
  
  Reply
Habib

March 11, 2013

Agreed. Problem is that this only matters because tomorrow’s time trial is so short. In a GT there’s always another mountain stage or long TT to make up the gap (especially re; Nibali/Rodriguez, less so Contador).

Reply
1. Alex
  
  March 11, 2013
  
  I think most of the major contenders can stick with the Sky riders in the mountains though and there aren’t usually so many flat kilometres against the clock as there were in last year’s Tour.
  
  Last year’s Giro was decided by 16 seconds, so you never know when an opportunistic break might make all the difference – particularly in races where there are bonus seconds up for grabs.
  
  Reply
Suave

March 12, 2013

It’s amazing how ineffective the Schleck’s are, when they are not spangled on Edgar, and filled full of substances for recovery, isn’t it?

Reply
1. Alex
  
  March 12, 2013
  
  I believe you mean: “The Schlecks are struggling for form after coming back from injury last year.”
  
  The situatoin is now being presented as ‘a psychological issue’.
  
  Reply
  1. Suave
    
    March 13, 2013
    
    I do love that phrase. It basically means “they have now realised that without drugs, they are just two Belgian twins who can cycle a bit”.
  2. Alex
    
    March 13, 2013
    
    Non-twin brothers from Luxembourg, actually. Clever to include deliberate mistakes so that you can use ignorance as your defence when you take the stand in your libel case.
Suave

March 13, 2013

I r not no ur onour?

Reply
1. Alex
  
  March 13, 2013
  
  That sounds almost like a Lee Scratch Perry reference.
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swHXwZcW5Vg
  
  Reply