CONSIDERING the significance of their contribution to British cycling, it is perhaps fitting that Team Sky will be permitted a few laps of honour before they ride off into the sunset. The news that satellite broadcaster BSkyB, recently taken over in a £30bn deal by media giant Comcast, are to pull their multi-million sponsorship of Messrs Froome, Thomas and Brailsford et al by the end of 2019 –broken to a stunned audience of riders and staff over dinner at the end of their training camp in Mallorca on Tuesday night – harbours the beginning of a long goodbye to a stunning decade of success for the British-based team.
While Brailsford hasn’t given up hope of finding another major sponsor prepared to replace them from the start of 2020 – a rather tough ask considering the scale of investment – Sky’s demise is a development which will divide the sport. As much as the team’s passing will be mourned by many cycling fans on this islands, it will be celebrated by rivals and traditionalists on the continent and elsewhere. A bit like the way Sheikh Mansour’s Qatari petrodollars have rewritten the rules of the FA Premier League, there were many who never quite took to the idea of Les Rosbifs dominating and suffocating the sharp end of a sport which they cherish as much as any other.
The team principal, no longer happy with Olympic success, made two big promises back in 2009 when he announced the team’s formation for the season ahead – to deliver a Tour de France winner within five years and to do so in a team which would be utterly untainted by allegations of doping. At the very least, he has been proven half right.
Since its official launch in January 2010, Team Sky and Brailsford have presided over a run of success which was utterly unthinkable previously. Their total haul right now is 322 victories, including eight Grand Tours, 52 other stage races and 25 one-day races. History was made by Sir Bradley Wiggins on the Champs Elysees in 2012 when he became the first winner of the Tour de France, but it was merely the first of a remarkable run of triumphs in the Tour de France general classification in the last seven years, with Chris Froome claiming the maillot jaune in 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017 before Geraint Thomas proved the stronger man this summer.
For all the high-quality individuals involved, it was the team which is the star. With a total investment in the period thought to be in excess of £150m, Sky ‘s budget for 2017 was reported as £34.5m – two thirds of the £52m that Celtic spent in the same year. It allowed them to blow their rivals out of the water, not just when it came to landing a supreme arsenal of super domestiques capable of strangling every major climb, a group where even support acts such as 21-year-old Colombian Egan Bernal are serious players, but in implementing Brailsford’s controversial ‘marginal gains’ culture. In 2016, their race costs (travel and accommodation) came in at £2.1m with bike and performance equipment standing at £2.3m.
Where Brailsford was less successful in convincing the wider world that everything was always above board. As desperate as he was to avoid the stench of scandal – and Sky sources insist the decision is born only of a review of partnerships by chief executive Jeremy Darroch after Comcast’s purchase - more than a few puffs of white smoke have emerged. It wasn’t so long ago that a scathing report by a parliamentary committee concluded that they had “crossed the ethical line” over their use of medical exemptions for banned drugs. The damaging presence of a mystery Jiffy bag delivered to Wiggins in 2011 and the absence of medical records at the time was a blow to their prestige, while Froome being cleared of wrongdoing after an adverse analytical finding for salbutamol provided more ammunition for the sceptics. There is the possibility of further negative PR in the pipeline, with Dr Richard Freeman, the team’s former doctor facing a GMC hearing in February over a mystery delivery of testosterone to the national velodrome in 2011.
“While Sky will be moving on next year, the team is open minded about the future and potential of working with a new partner, should the right opportunity present itself,” said Brailsford, who recently signed Thomas to a three-year deal and Bernal to a five-year one. “We aren’t finished yet by any means.”
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