So farewell then, Team Sky. The various incarnations of that elegant jersey will shortly be destined for the great wardrobe in the heavens along with other iconic designs like ONCE, La Vie Claire, Peugeot, TI-Raleigh, and so on back through Molteni and Faema. Whichever side of the 'Marmite Team' divide you inhabit, that jersey will, in my view, remain one of the most distinctive designs of the last 20 years. Remember 'the line'? Love the idea or feel a little churn in the stomach, no one else had dreamed up that one.
There is more to a cycling team's legacy than its jersey. Team Sky will go down in British sporting history as the first UK professional cycling team to achieve sustained success on the European stage, and the first to win the Tour de France. In cycling terms, you can hardly argue with six Tour de France wins in seven years, or the 'Grand Tour Slam' achieved by Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas with the Tour-Vuelta-Giro-Tour wins of 2017-2018.
Traditionalists – I am proud to be one – might carp about a relatively limited all-round record across one-day races. Liège-Bastogne-Liège with Wout Poels and Milan-San Remo with Michal Kwiatkowski is a meagre Monument haul for a team packing Sky's budget, but all WorldTour team managers would give their eyeteeth for a single Tour win. Merely winning a Tour stage justifies a budget for some.
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Team Sky, built on Dave Brailsford's so-called 'aggregation of marginal gains', had a mission, and they have become extraordinarily good at it. Six Tour de France wins in seven years stands alongside the best: the teams run by Cyrille Guimard who took the Tour seven times between 1976 and 1984 with Van Impe, Hinault and Fignon.
In landing Ineos as a replacement, Brailsford has achieved something many team bosses fail to do; finding new sponsors is a far bigger test for most team heads than actually winning bike races. Eventually Guimard fell at this hurdle, as did other hugely successful managers such as Giancarlo Ferretti – of Ariostea, MG-GB and Fassa Bortolo – and Bob Stapleton. The latter's struggles to get a new name on the jersey of cycling's most prolific winner of the 21st century, Mark Cavendish, were painful to behold.
Brailsford's detractors may choke on their coffee, but to first snag a backer that remained in place for 10 seasons – Sky – and then replace said backer with another extremely rich company, Ineos, is a triumph. In sport, doing something once is the simpler part; doing it again is tough.
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/aggregation-of-marginal-doubts-weighs-on-team-skys-legacy
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