Don’t write off Team Sky’s unconventional approach to the Classics just yet
By Joe Lindsey
As the team that won the Tour de France, Olympic time trial, and a host of other races in 2012, and enjoys one of the largest budgets in pro cycling, Team Sky is looked to by many as a leader, especially for its innovative approaches to racing.
But that is tinged with a hint of jealousy and no one cries when Sky struggles competitively. After the team’s highly anticipated and unconventional approach to the cobbled Classics, there was no small amount of schadenfreude when northern races came to a close on Sunday at Paris-Roubaix and Sky had managed a best finish of third place (Matt Hayman) in the lesser Dwars door Vlaanderen.
Outside of that one lonely podium, here are Sky’s best finishes in the first part of the spring campaign: Milan-San Remo—6th (Ian Stannard); E3 Prijs—4th (Geraint Thomas); Gent-Wevelgem—7th (Bernie Eisel); Ronde van Vlaanderen—17th (Edvald Boassen Hagen); Scheldeprijs—30th (Chris Sutton); Paris-Roubaix—12th (Eisel).
Instead of the traditional warm-up races of Het Nieuwsblad and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne (cancelled this year due to snow), Sky sent its entire Classics team to the Canary Islands for a training camp on Tenerife, the same approach it’s taken to massive effect with its stage race unit (which so far this year has won the Tour of Oman, Paris-Nice, and Criterium Internationale, taken 2nd at Tirreno-Adriatico, Pais Vasco and Criterium Internationale, and third at Pais Vasco).
That meant Sky also opted to skip Strade Bianche and the Driedaagse de West Vlaanderen (they also did not start the Driedaagse de Panne). It was a calculated risk, and all clearly geared around a breakout result in the cobbled Classics, which they didn’t get.
But don’t write off the unconventional approach as a failure just yet.
Sky’s Classics team was set to be led by riders like Boassen Hagen and Thomas. Boassen Hagen simply didn’t seem to have the extra gear when he needed it, but Thomas was clearly on form at E3, and but for untimely crashes at Milan-San Remo and Roubaix, might have factored in those races.
The other, unlooked for, story of Sky’s Classics season was the emergence of the young Stannard, the British national champion. His Classics results this year were far above his past history, excepting a 3rd place in KBK in 2010. At M-SR, he was one of the primary animators of the race; his 6’2″, 180-pound frame is ideally suited for the kind of pounding that cobbles dish out.
Classics captain Juan Antonio Flecha won Het Nieuwsblad in 2010 and was third at Roubaix and E3 as well. But after a couple of disappointing cobble campaigns in 2011 and 2012, Sky elected to re-think its approach over the offseason.
Flecha, 36, was let go and the team re-focused around a core of younger riders including Boassen Hagen and Thomas as leaders, backed by experienced road captains like Eisel and Matt Hayman, while grooming younger talents like Stannard and Luke Rowe, just 23.
It’s the same approach they’ve taken with stage racing. There are two primary differences.
First, Classics racing isn’t stage racing. If you mess up and lose time, you don’t get to try to gain it back the next day. Each race is a finite set piece of fitness, tactics, and luck. And you can’t discount the importance of that third ingredient.
Omega Pharma raced a tactically perfect Roubaix but missed out on the win because of an untimely flat for Sylvain Chavanel and two rogue crashes that took Stijn Vandenbergh and Zdenek Stybar out of the winning quartet.
The second difference is simply one of time. Sky began in 2010 with one express goal: to win the Tour de France with a British rider within five years. They accomplished it in three, but not without some issues along the way.
The 2010 campaign in particular was a disaster, and while captain Brad Wiggins crashed out of the 2011 Tour and wasn’t able to assess his form, in his autobiography “My Time,” he writes that there was a weird sense of relief after he DNF’d—relief that he wouldn’t have to test his uncertain form.
It took three years to really pull things together: the support cast that delivered Wiggins to the 2012 Tour win, the tactics that made it work, and the training that made the tactics possible.
This is year one of Sky’s campaign to target the Classics in the same way and, so far, the learning curve is identical. In 2010, Sky was the big joke of pro cycling: all that money and their two stage race victories were the minor Tour de Wallonnie and the Tour de Picardie. People scoffed at their approach and their lofty ideas.
There’s similar dismissiveness now. Speaking before Roubaix at a press conference, Omega Pharma manager Patrick Lefevere—whose teams have twice pulled a podium trifecta at Roubaix—said that if Sky won Flanders and Roubaix, everyone would go to Tenerife next year. “If not, then maybe they will stay home as well,” he said.
I doubt very much that Sky will scrap (at least entirely) its intensive training camp program. They will certainly rethink how much race-day work they need.
But in terms of form, the camps are absolutely better at improving fitness. The old idea that you have to race your way into form is steadily dying. In the powermeter era, training is far more controllable and pros can actually train harder than they race, not to mention more specifically.
If Sky had tried to race its way fit this year, they would have risked cancelled races (KBK) and bad weather (Tirreno-Adriatico) wreaking havoc on training plans. They risk crashes in minor races upending rosters. And even when the race goes smoothly, the efforts they make don’t necessarily jibe with training goals.
What Sky now has is a detailed set of data that shows how their Classics training went and what were the results in racing—data that coach Tim Kerrison can use to redesign the program for 2014.
Sky’s other approach will also be similar to what it’s done on the stage race side: use its massive resources to identify up and coming talent and buy it. Sky doesn’t typically buy established riders; they’re not likely to go sign Cancellara at the end of the year.
But they might raid other teams to cherrypick riders they think are undervalued or have major potential. And, keep your eye on the results from espoir versions of the Classics; that’s a likely spot for Sky to pick up future winners to groom.
Overall, they’ll be patient on the surface, and relentlessly grinding to improve below it. The results might not show themselves for another season, but if they commit to it, I think Sky can become a force for the Classics as well as the Grand Tours.
Now if they can only find a way to figure out that pesky luck question.