[Closed] How are gb suddenly so dominant in grand tours?

Nationally lottery funding, and us being good at sports that we sit down at.

pub sport now init? wiv all the drugs n that

Brailsford

Something to do with really big sunglasses

I can´t tell you why GB is so good, however I can tell you that both doping scandals and the economic recession hit spanish cycling (and many other sports) very hard.

I remember when DB talked about a British grant tour winner and I thought he was being optimistic to say the least. Brits just didn't win grand tours for most of the years that I followed cycling. Now we can't seem to stop. No, I have no idea why but it is amazing.

Britain has two main export industries.... weapons and .....

Combination of rising brits from the track and BC program, and declining competition possibly due to cleaning up the sport. Nice to see France getting stronger too. Remember that the number of distinct winners is still small. Much rests on individuals of exceptional talent.

It is indeed awesome to see. I remember the days when the ambition was maybe Chris boardman winning the prologue.

As an aside, how much better was the veulta than the tour. Proper old school cycling, Yates was awesome.

Better doctors 😉

Is six years "suddenly"?

A generation that has not grown up in densely smoke filled rooms?

It's all about looking at the stem.

Much rests on individuals of exceptional talent.

This to a certain extent. I remember Ovett, Coe, Cram and Elliot dominating middle distance running. Maybe the next generation won't be quite as good. But if you have a well funded and developed programe ( as we do) to constantly bring on new talent you will get results. Back before lottery funding and Brailsford none of this was happening.

Yes and if you think the Brits are doping, if they are (I don't think it's endemic) and no body else is, get a reality check.

I think the 9 grand tours and 5 in a row to GB riders is a bit of a misnomer. More pertinent to say 8 from 20 and 4 in a row to Sky. Not having a pop a Froome but you can’t look at him and say he is a product of the British system. A product of Sky and Brailsford but not Britian in any meaningful way. And if you remove Froome from the stats whilst it is still unbelievable to have 3 one time tour winners from the uk it’s not quite as otherworldly.

Yates(s) is/are the exciting addition to the mix. Big success much younger than the others and won a tour without an out and out  juganaught of a team around him.

Identify some pet areas/disciplines to fund and provide facilities and take funding from other sports or disciplines.

Why are Switzerland so good at XC?

From a very cursory look (just interested into how BC select the DH team for World Champs) ... it looked like the sum of support for a British DH rider is 1x team shirt... (a second one can be purchased ... funds presumably going to fund an Olympic cycling event).. travel etc. all at the rider's expense.

Norway did the same with Skiing in the 90's... almost ALL funding was put into ski jump and XC.

It's probably been building for a long time.

I remember when I returned here in 2004 from living in Oz for 30 years, the first impression I got was how many good and serious cyclists were around. I was puzzled why there didn't seem to be many none figuring in the top ranks of international sport.

Looks like they were simply incubating. 🙂

BTW I think the attitude here was better as well. Less of if I can't win, why bother entering.

I think for me it is a number of things:

- Lottery funding means that cycling has more funding at grass roots and with the Olympic program having been successful for a number of years now, means not only young riders being brought through, but also the staff, coaches, sports scientists, nutritionists etc are all full time and are all dedicated to cycling full time.

- The money at a team like Sky means they can offer riders long contracts and stability, Froome on £4 million a year, Bernal on £12 million for the next 5 years etc, no other team can offer more than a 2 year contract, so they can take riders under their wing and with the best coaches and support staff, can actually allow them to develop over time. Froome and Thomas were not natural GC riders really, they were created in a system with stable funding and effective coaches and staff. Look at Quickstep, 67 wins this year and no title sponsor for 2019, so often you have great riders swapping teams a lot, Porte is on 3rd team in 4 (?) years?

- Other countries seem to be on the decline, there is not the money there for French, Spanish and Italian riders, cycling is slipping down the ranks in Italy as a sport to support, football is everything and grass roots cycling is suffering.

- A lot of teams in my mind still seem stuck in a certain way of thinking, Movistar seem slow to change their ways, they have some great riders, but often seem to ride at odds with each other, as Alex Dowsett said "ride with Sky and if the start time is 10am, you get there for 9.45, ride with Movistar and bowl up about 10.15". It seems that the best teams are those that know their aims well and specifically go for that aim, Quickstep want stage wins not GC (Mass was an anomaly), Lotto Jumbo are doing well by emulating Sky's way of riding etc.

HOw are we rating the Vuelta win for Yates then compared to Froome/Thomas ? More impressive because he never had the might of Sky ? OR less because some of the other high-end riders were not at the Vuelta ?

Its a shame we can't celebrate our athletes success without constantly trying to find reasons to doubt them.

It started about 20 years ago when Peter Keen (Chris Boardman's coach) wrote the World Class Performance Plan that took a very analytical approach to performance management - fortunately the Lottery Funding came along to put that plan into action, allowing the likes of Brailsford to continually develop the programme and talent.

– Other countries seem to be on the decline, there is not the money there for French, Spanish and Italian riders, cycling is slipping down the ranks in Italy as a sport to support, football is everything and grass roots cycling is suffering.

It's all about robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Compare the French DH riders ... they all seem pretty positive about the National Camps etc. or the Swiss XC.

(Even allowing for a bit of being PC many of the French riders bring this up as to how they are part of some national team... )

The money at a team like Sky means they can offer riders long contracts and stability

Once they have riders to develop from a country....

Years of development, investment and talent spotting.

The Aussies did it with swimming, as did the Yanks. As said about the like of Coe and Cramm, every once in a while you get a group of supremely talented athletes and with the right coaching, investment and equipment they grow to beat the world.

Also the kids / youth racing calendar in the UK is packed, events pretty much every weekend most of the year round for track, 'cross, road & MTB all with great support and more often than not dedicated coaches & association development coaches; who seem to be on a talent spotting mission form an early age as they know exactly what they're looking for due to a well prescribed formula of performance parameters.

Lizzie Deignan came from competitive swimming into cycling, BC use standing jump tests too, so they're not just looking on 2 wheels, the net is cast wide and far. Both Geraint and the Yates' have great track back grounds and as seen from recent National events, there's plenty of mid-teens doing sub 25min 10 miles and a few down to the low 20's before they've even done their options.

Its a shame we can’t celebrate our athletes success without constantly trying to find reasons to doubt them.

Many of the reasons are not exactly hard to find though.

Well you race whoever turns up to race. Nibali rode La Vuelta but he was by all accounts using it as final training for the World's.

I think @scud has most of it covered. David Millar commented that the podium had the feeling of a changing of the guard - the current crop of GC contenders, Froome included, are all in their early to mid 30s and basically near to the end of their careers. Quintana is 28 but he needs a team behind him, not behind him and Valverde (or A.N.O.) . Also it looks like he's suffering from the last two seasons where he targeted two GTs each year. Again without a team fully supporting that he'll have had to do a lot of work.

With the exception of Movistar, ruined by their split team loyalties, none of the teams at this year's La Vuelta seemed to have strength in depth and so weren't able to dominate in the way that we've seen Team Sky do so effectively at Le Tour. You could argue that the typical TdF parcours favours Team Sky's approach of riding tempo, it's equally valid to argue that Team Sky took that approach because of the typical TdF parcours. La Vuelta and, to some extent, the Giro don't lend themselves to that style. There was some proper tactical racing this year (in La Vuelta), especially from Yates who showed some serious nous.

also the staff, coaches, sports scientists, nutritionists etc are all full time and are all dedicated to cycling full time

As well as this, they don't turn over and age in the same way as the athlete's do - so while on that side they have to constantly find, recruit, train and support individuals with the capability to become the best - every year the scientists and technologists get better still and so can make the athletes that come through today even better than they would have been say 5 years ago. A sports scientist's career can be measured in decades.

Plus i think the more successful cycling is, the more it can retain the very best coaches and support staff. There was a time when as soon as a someone like Brailsford had a proven record of success then they would be poached by the bigger money sports (i'm thinking of people like Clive Woodward going to football).

The old adage of "Success breeding success" is often true and these things go on in cycles.

I think the Vuelta was a great race as we saw teams other than Sky trying new tactics or trying things because there wasn't the Sky stranglehold and for it we saw a much more open race and some great new talent come through.

Success breeds success.. initial investment generating early successes inspires more young people to get into it and continue the run. I don't think it is one single thing that sparked it all off.

I don't think that the likes of Froome's success is any less British because he's not a product of the 'British system'. Lots of our athletes are not...Andy Murray is really a product of the Spanish Tennis system. Mo Farrah is far from a product of the British system. There are many different ways and routes people take to get tot the top of their sport and they are 100% a product of their own determination and desire to win at all costs.

Also I think that our attitude is different to a lot of the more traditional cycling nations. We're not bogged down and held back with decades of tradition and backward thinking. You see this with Sky and their approach that is slagged off....they take the latest and greatest science and technology and apply it and take a team approach. Die hard fans of the tradition and history of cycle racing might not like it, but they need to get a grip and grow up...things change, progress. Sky have embraced this and not been afraid to break traditions and take a more professional approach to the sport an they are reaping the rewards. Others haven't and as a result are not getting the success. Its been seen in all modern professional sports.

These things come in cycles as it's hard to maintain the momentum and keep feeding the sport with the talent, so enjoy it while it lasts.

It would be interesting if another British team was to be promoted to the top tier. Would there be enough riders, support, sponsorship to go around? I imagine Sky's value for money calculation relies heavily on 100% of british cycling fans supporting them, if half started supporting team TESCO or something it wouldn't be quite the same.

Or to put it the other way, do the French, Italians, Spanish, Germans etc suffer due to the lack of such a symbiotic relationship between the national team and the only domestic world tour team?

Or to put it the other way, do the French, Italians, Spanish, Germans etc suffer due to the lack of such a symbiotic relationship between the national team and the only domestic world tour team?

I see it partly the other way ... in terms of different teams benefit from symbiotic relationships in different countries.

There is a wealth of available talent across many different disciplines and a lot of that talent is also able to be grown into "adjacent" disciplines... but this needs some sort of national support by both a body and in promoting that sport/discipline.

I imagine Sky’s value for money calculation relies heavily on 100% of british cycling fans supporting them

But it's obviously NOT 100% or even close.  Instead lots of "British cycling fans" were cheering on Team Trek or Team Pivot yesterday... (Or you could say the same at the DH World Cup and Champs) ... or XC for that matter... where to be honest I ended up cheering for Switzerland in both mens and womens...  partly supporting a potential winner but I think it's also something about them having a "team" ... not a bunch of riders chucked together.

It now feels (my feeling) we have a Team for the GC's... so it's something to rally around and if we had Team TESCO as well my guess is that would actually create even more support... which British based team was going to finish first.... is somehow more exciting???

This is a good read, which goes some way to explaining it. It seems that the main ingredient was DB insisting that all the ‘blazers’ who’d run the sport so shambolically for years were pensioned off, then he started again with a clean sheet and a team of professionals

Something a lot of other U.K. sports could do with doing, ie the FA

...folks will say froome was born in Kenya, he still rides for Britain...

Froome Rides in the Grand tours for Sky, Just like Wiggins and Thomas, they also take up their spots on national squads when various commonwealth or Olympic games roll round, but day to day they ride for a Pro team called "Sky"...

That's the "Secret" of Current British road cycling Success, the tie up between a commercial Pro team and British Cycling... there's no real "Club Vs Country" type issues, as in other sports, and those two bodies can coordinate their resources and planning towards agreed, shared goals.

The strategy is overarching and means that BC/Sky can plan in terms of Olympic cycles as well as maintaining Grand tour successes. BC can point to Sky's Pro-tour success as evidence of the strategy working to help pull in Lottery/government funding. Sky can play on a bit of national pride in their own promotional campaigns with photos of Wiggins and Hoy on the track as well as Froome/Wiggins/Thomas on the road, it's mutually beneficial... Visible success, maintains interest, support and importantly funding.

It's telling (IMO) that many people don't quite see the difference between Sky and BC, because unlike most other Teams/National bodies they've deliberately blurred the lines...

The interesting thing is of course the focus has been kept on Road and Track, where BC are supposed to be responsible for promoting all forms and levels of cycling, but the truth is their measure of success is Gold at major (Ideally televised) sporting events, this tally's with Sky's goals of course... Neither organisation really gives two hoots about MTB/BMX/CX or for that matter "Utility cycling". Hence this "British cycling Success" hasn't quite managed to extend to making the same fuss over successes in MTB or change our nations transport priorities, the levels of cycling post "2012 glow" or really affect the discussions over cycling infrastructure...

It will be interesting to see how BC’s less brutal coaching regime will fair in a couple of years time.

The ‘bullying’ and sexism they seem to be trying to address could equally be seen as coaches telling athletes home truths (ok some of the home truths were monumentally badly phrased) but on the other hand telling someone they are either not going to make the cut or that they aren’t putting the effort in isn’t ever going to be easy or got right every time.

Froome being awesome & Team Sky having the best team accounts for all the GT wins except Yates's.

Froome being awesome & Team Sky having the best team accounts for all the GT wins except Yates’s.

Exactly.  To my knowledge Froome would not have benefitted from lottery funding.

Success at Tours = Team Sky

Success at track = Lottery Funding / Dave Brailsford (putting GB team budget way ahead of most countries, deliberately targeted track cycling as a gap was seen)

I think the Shane Sutton coaching method is overstated personally - the Yates bros are a good example in that Simon did the development track programme but most of his coaching was done by the youth dev coaches and Adam had no official BC support and was funded by the Dave Rayner fund, he had a youth development contract (with I think Cofidis?? ) before they joined Orica

I think to say that Froome never benefited from the BC system is not quite right, he was signed by Sky as a rider with a large VO2 max, but not the best bike handling skills or race-craft from what i understand, that took sports scientists and fellow staff to be able to recognise that potential, then over the years to mould that talent and potential into a GT winner.

Many of those staff came from BC system, or learnt from systems in place at BC. There was a large crossover in staff between Sky and BC initially.

Plus how many of the track guys are now getting places in Team Wiggins and Sky, both show money from the Pro teams feeding backwards and giving them opportunities on the road too.

It's a shame though that talent such as Evie Richards and Tom Pidcock have done to so well at MTB and CX, but feel like they have to feed into road racing to make money.

Since BC's obsession with gathering and analysing data, and marginal gains. All of which contributed to cycling becoming all a bit meh.

I am a bit 50/50 about the above, if it wasn't for increased data, marginal gains and the like, then the sport would be back in the days of EPO and the like, increased screening, better understanding of coaching, nutrition, power output and many other things has brought a cleaner sport.

But when you watch an attack like Froome's on Finestre in the Giro you can't help but be amazed until you hear Brailsford break it down into an Excel spreadsheet and lots of helpers and the magic clearly wears away.

It started about 20 years ago...

Yes, it has not been a sudden process at all. If you go back 20+ years, BC was a chaotic, amateurly managed organisation in a state of crisis, and junior cycling was in a dire state, with a handful of kids racing. A lot of hard grassroots volunteer effort and a huge change in how BC operates has transformed that situation. There are lots of very keen, very talented kids coming through that pipeline and a good number have gone on to world class level performance. Couple that with serious Olympic funding and a long term, heavyweight team like Sky, and you have a very different UK cycling scene.

I'm not saying there is no naughty behaviour going on, but that alone wouldn't explain the success we have seen.

I think to say that Froome never benefited from the BC system is not quite right, he was signed by Sky as a rider with a large VO2 max,

Not sure this is right is it? I thought when Froome released his data the conclusion was that his numbers were not particularly out of family compared with other riders. I suspect Froome's success has come form focussing on just one event, just being a TdF specialist and having the rest of the Sky team at his disposal during the race. He's come close to winning the Vuelta double previously but never quite managed it until last year. And really his Giro win was a one in a million gamble...he and the team never expected their audacious plan on stage 19 to actually work, but just gave it a go because they had nothing better to do and were really hoping for a podium place rather than to win the whole thing. That success was just as much to do with the failure of the competitors to respond than the execution of the plan. But who dares wins and all that.

I suspect the hierarchy is BC benefitted from DB, then sky benefitted from DB and through Sky Froome has benefitted from it.

Sky spend more than anyone else and Froome is a phenomenal natural talent. At others have said, those two facts account for about 80% of GB success.

Movistar are sky's primary GC rivals and appear to have lost the plot a bit in the last year or two.

Hope Sunweb, Michelton Scott and Lotto Jumbo can give Sky even more of a challenge on GC next year.

Three British winners of the three grand tours is a hell of a thing, bit if you follow road cycling there's nothing unexpected or suspicious about it whatsoever.

Not sure this is right is it? I thought when Froome released his data the conclusion was that his numbers were not particularly out of family compared with other riders.

I think the bit you're missing is 'other high-end elite riders'. It was around 85, but closer to 88 when he's at racing weight. Greg Lemond's was around 92, I think, and Egan Bernal's is apparently in that region too. The gist of it was that it was at the high end of human capabilities, so not impossible, but not exactly average even by pro athlete standards.

Hang on... erm...

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/latest-news/chris-froome-described-as-close-to-human-peak-after-physiological-data-release-202644

Sky spend more than anyone else and Froome is a phenomenal natural talent. At others have said, those two facts account for about 80% of GB success.

But then he also needs support from the team.

if you follow road cycling there’s nothing unexpected or suspicious about it whatsoever

I don't think it's suspicious... BC are merely addressing their measurable KPI's and the ones that provide the best funding for them and Sky is then just sucking up the talent developed (and put into the right box to meet their KPI's) through BC.

https://www.esquire.com/uk/life/a19053974/chris-froome-interview/

That's the Esquire piece around the Froome physiological tests. There's always this weird dissonance where some people expect elite athletes to be physiologically comparable to 'normal' people, where the reality is that by definition, they're pretty much inevitably outliers and near mutants, otherwise they wouldn't - guess what - be elite athletes.