I'm not sure what I expected before the Team Ineos presentation, but everything that I was hearing and reading had some kind of negative connotation to it. Not quite fake news, but hardly good news, either.
Then there was the secrecy and lack of information surrounding the changeover from Team Sky to this new sponsor, and about where the venue was, that only selected journalists were invited, and that it couldn't be talked about before a certain time. The vibe wasn't quite 'if you want to be part of Fight Club then you can't talk about Fight Club', but the sentiment was there.
So, bused into a remote Yorkshire village on a luxury coach and crammed into a barely adequate room, it felt bizarre. Sure, it was all arranged beautifully, and everything was planned, with all eventualities considered. 'Controlled' would be the appropriate description. Now, I'd been to 16 team presentations as a rider, and none of them felt like this. But I was experiencing life on the other side of the media/team interface, so maybe this was normal. Naturally, I asked those accustomed to the typical media day affair, and they all were as dubious as I was.
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Okey-dokey: let's try not to have any preconceptions. But still I was left asking myself whether there was a fear that some of the 15,000 face masks would turn up to ridicule Ineos CEO Jim Ratcliffe, or was it just a case of trying to keep some kind of lid on what was said before Dave Brailsford or anyone from the new team backer had given us the corporate position? Maybe it was none of those speculative excuses, and someone just fancied a trip to a country pub. We'll never know.
Video shown, brief speeches made by the two sirs – Jim and Dave – and then a break to allow the scripted arrival of four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome wearing the new kit. Then it was a Q&A session, in which, strangely, there was no mention of why burgundy was accompanying the traditional black, and nothing about marginal gains, either. Nope – there was none of that overtly performance-orientated spiel.
Instead, the first question was about plastic and pollution, and how it was a complete turnaround from where Sky was with their cleaner oceans campaign, and wasn't it all rather cynical? Then Chris Froome had a couple of questions before there was a return to more plastic, fracking and anything else totally unrelated to sport.
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