WorldTour ranking: 3rd (up from 9th)
Win count: 43 (up from 26)
Top riders: Christopher Froome (6th), Richie Porte (11th), Geraint Thomas (14th)
Back with a bang. It’s fair to say there was more than a little pressure on the shoulders of Team Sky going into this year but their 2014 report card, characterised by disappointment, injury, and under-achievement, now seems a distant memory.
“There was something amiss last year. We were trying hard but it wasn’t coming off,” said team principal Dave Brailsford, speaking on the Cyclingnews Podcast in September. “This time last year we were busily racking our brains, really working hard about how to turn the situation around.”
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Whatever it is they’ve done – and Brailsford points to an improved winter period and the reinvigorating effect of a general shake-up – it has worked. Sky have racked up no fewer than 43 victories this year and, most importantly, have returned to the top of their Tour de France perch, with Chris Froome taking his second overall yellow jersey. When the team was launched in 2010 their mission statement was to have a British winner of the Tour within five years; here we are, and they’ve done it three times over.
While the team didn’t match its highest-ever win tally of 51, the success was more varied, with more contributors, than that Wiggins and Cavendish-oriented 2012 campaign. Froome weighed in with overall wins at the Ruta del Sol and the Critérium du Dauphiné before the Tour, but his win-rate was bettered by Elia Viviani, who enjoyed his finest season to date with eight victories – the home soil sprint on stage 2 of the Giro d’Italia being the biggest of his career.
Then there’s Vasil Kiryienka, who also won a stage at the Giro and made sure the rainbow skinsuit stayed in the Sky family by repeating Bradley Wiggins’ individual time trial triumph at the World Championships. Richie Porte, the team’s most prolific rider with nine victories, was on fire in the early portion of the season, and his overall wins at Paris-Nice, the Volta a Catalunya and the Giro del Trentino confirmed it was time to step out from Froome’s shadow.
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