I’m back and I’m British, so I’m going to start with something on Team Sky. No, don’t click off. I’ve not come to praise Sky, although I’m not going to bury them either.
It’s just that last year, although they scored 10/10 in the Tour de France, their Classics performance was a five, at best.
And that’s a shame, because the team have riders who can win these historic races, but I reckon they aren’t doing so because of their tactics. And I’m not alone.
A couple of years ago an old British pro, Barry Hoban, was at a bike show a few days after Paris Roubaix when he saw some Sky riders who’d ridden it. It was the year that Tom Boonen blew everybody away and won on his own.
Hoban, who’s never shy of making a point – but he has the right to make one in cycling, with eight stages in the Tour de France, a win in Gent Wevelgem and podiums in Paris-Roubaix and Liege-Bastogne-Liege to his name – asked the Sky boys why they did all the chasing behind Boonen.
The Sky men looked a bit sheepish then one of them tapped his ear, indicating that’s what they were told to do over the radio.
“It’s like they aren’t allowed to think for themselves, and riders must sort things themselves in Classics. There’s no time for thinking, no time to rectify a mistake,” Hoban says.
“Riders have to make quick decisions as the race develops, not rely on being told how to react by the team manager.”
He thinks Sky might be victims of their own success in stage races.
“They try to control Classics like they do the Tour. It worked once, when Mark Cavendish won the worlds and the British team controlled the whole race, but it didn’t work in the Olympics and it hasn’t worked and won’t work in the Classics.”
But he says the solution is simple.
“The team leaders should follow Boonen and [Fabian] Cancellara and call the shots from there. There should be a road captain too, someone in the team keeping an overview of the race, and he should tell the rest to move as and when needed.”
Hoban says he would have loved to have raced against Sky, “I’d have encouraged them to keep it steady at the front, to always chase. Then I’d have taken advantage of it.
“You have to be crafty in a Classic, especially if you aren’t the strongest, and Sky hasn’t got the strongest Classics riders. In that situation you must use the others.”
Not the strongest perhaps, but Hoban thinks Sky has riders who can win.
“Geraint Thomas has the ability. Ian Stannard too, but Stannard has to get away near the end. If he’s in a group of six he’ll be sixth, like in Milan-San Remo last year.
“But having said that, it was Sky’s best Classics ride. They couldn’t control it, the race didn’t go that way, and when Stannard got in the break he did everything right. A harder finish and he might have won.”
The other place where Sky fall down is the team’s preparation. Training camps, where doses of different efforts are used to get perfect physical form, work for Grand Tours.
But although Classics racers need the best form they can get, they also need race reflexes, and you only get them by racing.
Lose their race reflex and riders make mistakes, they get bundled to the back. They line themselves up for corners and come out 20 places behind where they were.
Then they have to chase, and that is a problem in well over 200 kilometres.
And race reflexes aren’t something that can be re-created in a lab. A coach can’t point at them, but without them riders make mistakes and that costs effort to rectify. Or worse, they end up having crashes.
How many times did Geraint Thomas crash in the 2013 Tour of Flanders? He even had one crash all on his own. The bunch suddenly parted and there was Thomas lying on the floor.
And Thomas isn’t a bad bike handler. He’s normally known for being good when a race gets sketchy. It just looked like he’d lost his race reflex.
So what will happen this year? Well, Sky say the Classics team will do more races and fewer training camps in the run up to the Classics. So that will help.
And their tactics? They obviously won’t reveal those before the day, but I’m pretty sure with the brain power behind the team the lessons have been learnt.
And if they have, then watch for Thomas, Stannard and Edvald Boasson-Hagen in the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix and Ghent Wevelgem.
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