Inside Team Sky

by Walsh, David

  Also by David Walsh:

  Seven Deadly Sins

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2013

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © 2013 by DW Publications Limited

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  All rights reserved.

  The right of David Walsh to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

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  Every reasonable effort has been made to contact copyright holders of material reproduced in this book. If any have inadvertently been overlooked, the publishers would be glad to hear from them and make good in future editions any errors or omissions brought to their attention.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  All photographs © Getty Images

  Hardback ISBN: 978-1-47113-331-2

  Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-47113-332-9

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-47113-334-3

  Typeset in the UK by M Rules

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  For Jess, John and little Rory.

  Contents

  Team Sky characters

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  List of Illustrations

  Team Sky characters

  Staff:

  Sir David ‘Dave’ Brailsford

  Conductor of the orchestra that is Team Sky, Dave Brailsford is Team Principal. Brailsford’s Midas touch extends both to Team Sky – seeing Wiggins ride to 2012 Tour de France victory – and his role as performance director of British Cycling, leading Team GB to unrivalled cycling success including eight gold medals at the London 2012 Olympic Games.

  Rod Ellingworth

  After a short spell as a pro, Rod found his real talent was coaching. Now Performance Manager within the team and another of the British Cycling émigrés, Ellingworth has brought a generation of successful British road racers through his U23 Academy.

  Tim Kerrison

  Head of Performance Support, Kerrison is the sports scientist of the group. Coming from huge successes with the Australian swimming team, his arsenal includes a deep knowledge of the science but it comes with a humanity that allows him to be both man and genius to his athletic charges.

  Alan Farrell

  At the beginning of 2012, Alan Farrell was just a doctor with a passion for cycling; now he is Lead Doctor in the most successful pro team in the world. Covering all three Grand Tours in his first year, Alan was thrown in at the deep end but like a boy who’d run away with the circus, he was in his element.

  Mario Pafundi

  Hailing from Southern Italy, Mario Pafundi is Lead Carer. He brings his infectious Italian charm to everything he touches, including aching legs, sleepy hotel staff, colleagues at the dinner table. And because of how he’s lived his life, he sleeps on seven pillows.

  Gary Blem

  South African Gary Blem is Lead Mechanic. Humble and down to earth, Gary is a master of his craft and a dealer in respect and fairness. ‘Froomey,’ he says, ‘is a Kenyan and African.’

  2013 Tour de France riders:

  Chris Froome, 28

  Chris Froome leads the team into the 2013 Tour de France. A poly-national if ever there was one, this summer Chris flies the Team Sky flag, and he intends to plant it at the top of every mountain.

  Richie Porte, 28

  Richie is Tasmanian, a talented climber and comes into the Tour in the midst of an impressive season of racing including a win at Paris–Nice. What he lacks in height he makes up for in ‘small man attitude’.

  Geraint ‘G’ Thomas MBE, 27

  Flitting between track and road, this Welshman is no stranger to success. With Olympic gold in both Beijing and London in the team pursuit, G goes into the Tour hoping to show that in today’s Tour you can see tomorrow’s champion.

  Kanstantsin ‘Kosta’ Siutsou, 30

  Siutsou is a reliable engine from Belarus, useful for taking the strain for long sections of the stage. After leaving the 2012 Tour early due to a broken leg, Kosta has been eyeing up 2013 from a long way out.

  Vasil ‘Kiry’ Kiryienka, 32

  The second big Belarusian engine, Kiryienka is known for putting himself on the ropes to preserve his team leader’s legs. Easily the most stylish rider in the team.

  Peter Kennaugh MBE, 24

  Born on the Isle of Man, Pete Kennaugh is the youngest of the team and rides his first Tour de France in 2013. Not one to cower at big events, Kennaugh’s mettle earned him a gold medal at the London 2012 Games.

  Edvald Boasson Hagen, 26

  The only Norwegian in the squad is also the only rider to have made it to every Team Sky Tour de France in the right colours. So classy is Eddy that everyone wonders why he doesn’t win more.

  David López, 32

  This Spanish domestique is a new recruit for Team Sky after signing him at the end of the 2012 season from Movistar. Because Froome prefers to room with his friend Porte, López will be given the one single room available to the riders at the team hotels.

  Ian Stannard, 26

  The third big engine of the group, this time of a British stripe. Sporting some of the biggest pistons in the peloton, 2013 will be Stannard’s first ever Tour de France.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Butterfly, don’t flutter by, stay a little while with me.”

  Danyel Gérard, ‘Butterfly’

  It is Thursday afternoon, 27 July, two days before the start of the Tour de France, 110 years after the first staging of this pilgrimage. Back then it was men and bikes, now the cyclists are just part of the commercial juggernaut that follows the money and takes over part of Western Europe every July. For the start of this year’s race, the Tour has set up camp on the island of Corsica.

  For me this Tour is the beginning of the end of an odyssey with Team Sky. Eight months before, team boss Dave Brailsford had said, ‘Come and live with us, spend as much time as you like. Look wherever you want, ask whatever questions you want.’ It started in Malaga at the end of January, a week there. Then there was a second training-camp week in Tenerife, a few more days in Malaga, two days in Nice, two weeks at the Giro d’Italia and now, the Tour.

  At the small airport in Figari, Marko Dzalo waits for me. It is the fourth time Sky has sent someone to pick me up. Always the designated driver is there before I land and the greeting is friendly and businesslike.

  ‘How was your trip?’

  ‘Yeah good. All well with the team?’

  ‘Think so.’

  It takes about twenty minutes to reach the hotel just outside Porto-Vecchio. Dzalo is a soigneur with Team Sky. Officially, the team prefers that he and the brotherhood of soigneurs are called ‘carers’. Superficially this distinction is nothing – ‘soigneur’ is the French word for ‘one who cares for’ – why should it matter that Sky has chosen to g
o with the English version?

  But it does matter. They prefer ‘carers’ because traditionally soigneurs have been carriers and providers of doping products and central to the culture that Brailsford, performance manager Rod Ellingworth and head of performance Tim Kerrison despise. First you change the name, then the habits. To their own soigneurs they are saying, ‘We employ you to care for the riders. Nothing more.’

  To the rest of the peloton there is a message that some on the receiving end will chose to see as a two-fingered salute. Like Sky is saying, ‘We are not like you.’

  Among themselves Sky’s rank and file staffers refer to the carers as ‘swannies’, which isn’t exactly a toeing of the party line.

  Dzalo and I got to know each other during the Giro d’Italia earlier in the summer. One short conversation stayed with me. We’d stayed at a hotel in Tarvisio, an Italian town close to the borders with Slovenia and Austria, and he had tweeted about his home country, the beautiful mountains he could see from the Italian side and the sign that said ‘12 kilometres to Slovenia’.

  Next morning he was loading suitcases onto the truck when he said, ‘You know my home town is just over that mountain. I could be there in no time.’

  ‘Does it make you want to drop everything and just go?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I left home to work in this sport. This is my life, where I now belong.’

  He was sure about the road he’d taken, no interest in turning back. This struck a chord because I’d encountered the same sense of purpose a lot in Team Sky. It is common for people in this sport to fall in love with the milieu and their lives on the road. A lot of the Sky people don’t feel like that, but they do like the environment around their team: the good organisation, the intelligent approach to preparation, the behaviour demanded of both riders and staff.

  Though they often complain about having to work longer hours than any other team, even on the worst days they don’t speak of wanting to leave. Not many of the drifters who move from team to team stop off at Sky.

  ‘Room two-one-two, second floor,’ says Mario Pafundi as I pull my bag across the hotel car park. For two years running Pafundi has received the Team Sky staff award for ‘Happiest Ant of the Year’. Head soigneur – or ‘lead carer’ – and an important character on the team. Bright, conscientious, Italian Mario has charm and good looks but nothing compares to the trick he runs with the room numbers.

  Sky bring a team of nine riders and twenty-two support staff to the Tour de France and it is Mario who gets to the hotel early and assigns riders and staff to the available rooms. He then takes all of the suitcases to their respective rooms and, over lunch, he sits down with the room list in front of him and memorises it. So when riders and staff arrive at the hotel they will quickly find Mario, who’s never far away, and he will give them their room number.

  Sometimes the key will be in the room, often it’s at reception. Mario’s efforts mean no one has to check in. ‘Deux cent douze, s’il vous plaît,’ and on you go.

  From 212 I look down on the car park in front of the hotel and admire the matter-of-fact cycling people go about their work. Bikes are checked, cars washed and, because I haven’t seen some of these guys for five weeks, I wander down their way.

  ‘Did you see last night’s game, Spain and Italy?’ David Fernandez, the mechanic asks.

  ‘No,’ I admit.

  ‘Spain won seven-six on penalties, Jesus Navas got the winning penalty, the one who’s going to Manchester City.’

  There is general agreement that the mechanics and soigneurs work longer hours than everyone else in the team. For the mechanics, the Tour is a particular challenge as the riders all get new bikes for the race and they have to be set up exactly how each guy wants it.

  For the Tour each rider has three road bikes and two time trial bikes, except Chris Froome and Richie Porte who have three road, two time trial and one other bike that is especially light and the one they will use in the mountains. That’s forty-seven bikes and regardless of which mechanic gets a bike ready and passes it fit for racing, lead mechanic Gary Blem will then examine it and give it the second and final ‘Okay.’

  It is 7.30 on this beautiful Corsican evening when Brailsford returns from somewhere. Since I’ve been around the team he has been consistently friendly, helpful, at times disarmingly honest, and always interesting. The courtesies extended by the staff are in part a reflection of their respect for Brailsford. It was, after all, the boss’s idea, so they all more or less bought into it.

  We meet in the car park. Something’s playing on his mind. There had been a press conference that afternoon and it hadn’t passed smoothly. Now, a few hours later, he’s gently shaking his head as if by doing so he can clear it.

  ‘How did the press thing go?’

  ‘It was all right, except for Paul’s question.’ Paul Kimmage is one of my closest friends and three years previously he was in my exact position, all ready to travel with Team Sky on the Tour de France. The Kimmage/Team Sky marriage didn’t survive the honeymoon. Kimmage’s take on the divorce was straightforward. Brailsford had offered full access to the team but when he started to ask tough questions, they didn’t like it.

  Brailsford says he was deeply embarrassed by the way things turned out because he had given an undertaking that he couldn’t honour. According to him, Kimmage rubbed people up the wrong way and they came to Brailsford with their objections. Part of the difficulty was that, while the team’s policy precluded the employment of any rider or staff member with a doping past, not every rider or staff member was going to be comfortable with the kind of scrutiny that Kimmage wished to exercise.

  Feeling that Kimmage’s presence would negatively impact on the team performance, Brailsford withdrew the offer. Kimmage was furious. Their relationship never recovered.

  ‘What did he ask you?’

  ‘Towards the end, he asked a question about Eddie [Team Sky rider Edvald Boasson Hagen]. He said something like, “A few years ago Edvald was being spoken of as the next Eddy Merckx, why is he then not a contender here?” I expected Paul would ask a doping question and wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly. So I repeated Paul’s question back to him, saying “Are you asking why Edvald is not a contender here?” He said “Yes.” He asked the question quietly but I still thought it was incredibly insulting to Edvald.

  ‘He’s a young guy, he’s sitting there in front of hundreds of journalists and he’s being made to look like he’s some kind of failure. If the circumstances had been different, it would have been a fair question. Say Paul was interviewing me, one on one, or he was at a press conference where Tim Kerrison and I were being quizzed about the team performance, that question would have been fine.

  ‘It’s one we’ve discussed many times within the team. Eddie’s a bit of a conundrum. He started really well within the team, then didn’t progress as much as we expected but we feel like we’re beginning to understand him better. Last year he didn’t have a brilliant first half to the season, but rode really well at the Tour and finished second at the World Championships.

  ‘This season it’s been the same. Okay in the first half of the season but he’s improved as he did last year and comes into this race on very good form. He’s a very important member of the team and a really popular guy with the other riders. You could feel the other riders bristle when Paul asked that question because they would have felt it was disrespectful to Eddie. I thought it was too, and I just said, “You have your opinions and you’re entitled to them and I have mine.”

  ‘In terms of world ranking points, Eddie is twelfth. He’s a very good rider and I just wanted to lean over towards him when Paul asked that question and say, “Don’t pay any attention to this, Eddie, this isn’t about you, this is about this guy getting at me and getting at the team.” In that setting, I thought it was a cheap shot and I can understand why the riders were pissed.’

  I find myself in the unusual position of hearing about a small journalist/manage
r contretemps but from the point of view of the latter. Boasson Hagen thought the question slightly unfair but wasn’t bothered by it. Laid back and ultra calm by nature, it would take more than that to ruffle his Norwegian feathers.

  ‘After you gave Paul the answer about your opinion differing from his, I presume you then defended Edvald?’ I say, suspecting that in his anger at Kimmage he’d not done this.

  He looks at me silently, confirmation of what I’d imagined.

  Through years of success with the Team GB track cycling team, and more recently with Team Sky, Brailsford regularly lauded the influence of forensic psychiatrist Steve Peters who worked with him and a high percentage of the athletes who passed through the GB system. One important Peters contribution was his ‘chimp model’ analysis, that both athletes’ and managers’ performances diminished when actions were inspired by the irrational side of their personalities. The ‘chimp’ is essentially an emotional machine that behaves independently of us. It is neither good nor bad. It competes with our ‘computer’, the logical and calculating side of our character, and if left to dominate can result in bad decision making. We are not responsible for the nature of our chimp but we are responsible for managing them. If you understand that part of your own brain, the part that reacts emotionally rather than logically, you will be more effective.

  It is a concept that has been embraced by Team Sky’s management, and within the team different individuals talk about the chimp and the need to keep it in its place. Brailsford is an avid believer, or at least he was until Kimmage asked that question. Then it was over to you, Mr Chimp, you tell Kimmage what you think of him.

  In 2012 Dave Brailsford felt his chimp straining at the leash a lot of the time on the Tour. He was taken aback at the ferocity of the questioning his team faced on the doping issue and this year he had assumed that the issue would have faded away.

  ‘Last year it seemed full on, and I had never been exposed to that level of aggression. I couldn’t get my head around how unjust it was, and this time last year I felt just rotten. I felt terrible for Tim [Kerrison] who I had persuaded to come into this sport.’