devashish_paul wrote:
tuckandgo wrote:
Alvin Tostig wrote:
Gosh, I'm tired of seeing this again. At least they'll be wearing different jerseys this year (along with another rider in yellow).
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Only because you don't like them. People who don't like Sky forget that for Sky fans their dominance is great.
Honestly if this picture had Froome in the middel of the white jerseys I would be happier just so that Hinault's nose could be rubbed in the dirt.
For Thomas I am personally happy, but I would have liked to see Sky NOT pull it off.
But to me this is almost like the British coming over and taking all of India and ruling the entire place with 500,000 people vs 300 Million Indians who could not pull their heads out of a paper bag and would just keep fighting themselves. I'll give the British the upper card when it comes to doing a lot of things efficiently and getting organized and this is instantiated in Sky. Their planning, execution, attention to detail and leaving no stone unturned is just a testament to what a focused company can do and take on the world.
For the other teams, they can get as organized, they can raise more funds (the entire world of fundraising is there for them and at one point Sky was a startup). All teams have access to all the equipment, recovery tools, and medical support (at this point whether it is legal or grey zone or whatever, all teams have the same access).
Man, I want to see Sky get beaten, but just like the 300 Million Indians who could not pull their heads out of a paper bag to kick the British off their turf, it seems the rest of the world's teams are stuck in the same category. This British team just figured out how to dominate all these guys.
Now can someone go beat them next year?
Interestingly we (as much as I am British) have done exactly the same thing in rowing and broadly dominated the sport since 2000 (I say broadly as it is more nuanced than that), the Aussies are finally copying our system and the balance of power will probably shift. A lot of it is detailed in a recent biography of the chief rowing coach, Jurgen Grobler (who incidentally has coached an olympic gold medal every olympics since 1976).
The gist of it is quite simple -
1. Throw massive resources at it, including coaching, support teams, equipment so the cutting edge best is always available.
2. Centralise training so that the best athletes are working together all the time (historically not the case in rowing, or in cycling for that matter)
3. Run deep talent ID programmes and ruthlessly develop stars and cull others as necessary.
On paper it's not rocket science, in practice it is very difficult to do. These are the 'marginal gains' of rowing, you can decide for yourself if they are applicable to cycling.
(There's even some pre Berlin Wall East German doping thrown in for good measure.)
