What is it about Team Sky that rankles so? Why do the come across as mirthless, joyless automatons? Can it be because they actually are? Or is there more to it than that?
Unlike football teams, cycling teams generally lack a definable character, making it hard to truly love or dislike a team. With that in mind, Sky have really outdone themselves to draw such opprobrium from cycling fans.
Let’s consider football squads. Chelsea FC are annoying and excruciatingly smug to anyone who isn’t a supporter, Real Madrid represent footballing royalty and can be described as sanctimonious to the nth degree, whereas Bayern Munich are cold, calculating and lacking in mercy.
But Belkin? They stir almost absolutely nothing in me. I can take them or leave them. Lampre-Merida? Their kit makes me feel nauseated but other than that, meh. BMC Racing? Gee, kinda cool bikes, dodgy owner, Cadel is a blast, but again, kind of the cycling equivalent of beige.
Unlike football fans, most of us don’t really have ‘our’ team.
You may like the kit of this team or the bikes of that, or be a fan of a particular rider on another but for all intents and purposes not many teams stir a passion, whether positive or negative. When a favourite rider leaves one team for another, you follow the rider.
Of course there are exceptions, like any team that included Lance Armstrong. The Americans and many an Anglo loved US Postal and Discovery, until we discovered what was really being delivered by Lance’s postie. Most French loathed those teams.
Teams put together to incubate home-grown talent are another exception, with the Basque squads such as Euskaltel-Euskadi and the Aussie crew of Orica-GreenEDGE drawing warm support in their respective homelands.
But no single team gets folk irked in the manner that Sky do.
They’d probably say they don’t need the support of the fans in any case, but their riders could certainly do with a cheer and a hug after a dismal early-season campaign.
Chris Froome took the scalp at the Tour of Oman, which was a nice start. Ian Stannard cracked the peloton to win at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, but cracked his vertebrae at Gent-Wevelgem, depriving them of their leader for most of the Classics.
Wiggins and Geraint Thomas performed admirably at Paris-Roubaix but winning is king.
On the weekend they had a terrible Liege-Bastogne-Liege, with one single rider finishing the race that he and five teammates started. Nathan Earle put up a good show to come in 70th, but for a high-profile team like Sky, the past few weeks have not been good enough.
“When you actually analyse and look at all of the illnesses and crashes we’ve had this year,” said Dave Brailsford in Liege, “we’ve had proportionally more than you’d expect to have and when you look at the last couple of years, we’ve had proportionally less than you’d expect to have. It’s like we’ve saved them all up and had them at once.”
Interestingly, the team changed the training schedules of some riders ahead of the Classics campaign, meaning several skipped altitude training.
“We feel we didn’t get the training that wrong last year, but we refined a few things,” Tim Kerrison, Sky’s head coach, said this winter.
“Training at 2000 metres is not required for the classics. Some of the guys for the classics team didn’t thrive in that environment. For some of the bigger classics guys, that mountainous environment just doesn’t suit them. We also wanted to get them more race days before the classics.”
Maybe those blueprints need looking at again. It’s not been stellar for Sky so far. Of course, a win in the Tour de France for Froome would turn the season around, though Alberto Contador might be standing in his way.
Still, whatever Sky do on the road they have little chance of altering many a cycling fan’s perception of them. Dour, joyless, irritable, narky, and I’m only talking about Sir Bradley here, never mind the rest of the team.
Strolling through the team area at the start of the Tour of Flanders recently, I was taken aback by the sheer volume of supporters hanging around outside the buses of Boonen, Peter Sagan and Cancellara, all putting up a huge cheers when their heroes emerged.
The Sky bus, in contrast, looked like the gathering point for a very small Paul Weller fanclub. Pehaps 20 to 25 Rapha-clad English guys stood around, almost all sporting a Mod-inspired barnet. Deafening cheers definitely did not ring in the ears of the Sky lads when they finally emerged.
You do reap what you sow. Never a truer word uttered. And this is what Sky have been asking for, in a sense. Many just cannot love or admire them, thought they may respect what they have achieved.
It’s not just that so few can like them, it’s really that so many truly dislike them. That can’t be a nice feeling, no matter how focused you are.
Do they care? Almost certainly not. They are businessmen, and they get the job done (sometimes). But would it kill them to crack a smile from time to time? Maybe ditch the sarcasm and the irony for a moment in post-race interviews? Even have a laugh at themselves?
They’d definitely still be breathing, and it wouldn’t cost them a penny.
Da Da Spoon
Guest
I hate OGE 1. They are Australian and we in the UK inherently hate them for that 2. They are boring I’m very happy for them to be anti-doping – as long as it doesn’t turn out to be untrue in 10 years time. So bloody hard to be optimistic these days.
Da Spoon
Guest
Oh here we go again. Aussies attacking Team Sky and we are still two months of the TDF. Same old same comments year after year, why don't you have a go at someone else, maybe Katusha or Lotto - could it be that Sky are British? Can't you see that your hatred makes your opinions worthless. Brailsford and Sky have reaped what they have sown - Demolition on the track at the last two olympics and wins in the last two tours with Froome's devastating attacks last year being the most exciting we've seen in a number of years. Not to mention Cavendish's success with both Sky, HTC and Quickstep. Let's hope he equals Hinault's stage wins record this year and then breaks the all time record in the next few years. It will be the icing on the cake for British Cycling. Good luck in the tour OGE I think your gonna need it.
Bones506
Roar Guru
I dislike Wiggins almost as much as Gilbert.
Jono
Guest
In a way I guess Sky are getting what they reaped. They have put across this highly professional, no nonsense attitude coupled with some big personalities who while undeniably great cyclists, aren't terribly personable. Add in significant success and you have the makings of an easy "villain" for the sport for people to get behind. So they didn't do anything wrong, in fact you have two positive aspects that can be reserved purely due to a public perception of high profile individuals in the team. It probably didn't help that the previous cycling villain, Alberto Contador (who is now walking the redemption path in terms of public opinion), was being dealt with so in the sporting narrative there was a need for a new villain to be cast and Sky unfortunately had just the right combination to be the villains without necessarily being villainous.
Tomas Fish
Roar Guru
Sky do have a huge following here in the UK, but I agree when you ask a lot of people outside of the UK, they aren't a popular team. I for one aren't really a fan, they're admirable in what they have achieved, but they seem so far removed from the world of cycling, especially the leaders, (I'm looking at Sir Brad in particular). They make comments where they don't need to, Wiggins' comments about French cyclists, Porte's comment about Quintana attacking at last year's Tour, I had a particularly tough time explaining to friends I'd have rather seen Quintana or Rodriguez win the Tour last year.
RichButNotThatRich
Guest
Team Sky have a huge fan base in the UK, just as your homegrown teams as Euskatel and OGE, that is what Sky is to the British. Go to a popular cycling spot at the weekend you can't move for Sky clad riders. Admittedly anyone whose been following Procycling for more than 5 years tends to have more affinity to the French teams that kept our pecker up when few Brits could be found in the peloton and to these guys, being seen in any Team Sky kit is a sin worse than having the arms of your sunglasses inside your helmit straps. But as I see it, there are 3 problems with Sky: 1. There claim to be whiter than white at their inception was nieve and perceived as arrogant , they would have been better to use the Garmin-Sharp model of everyone make mistakes. 2: they tried to win everything, but never had much success in the classics, they're in danger of becoming a TdF only team like Discovery and people will be very warey of that. 3 Wiggo is divisive, although he lends the team a bit of character, it's not good character. I will love him forever for what he's done for British cycling, but if you've got no reason to love British cycling, you've got no reason to love Sir Brad (although his twitter page displays a Belgian flag!) in 2 seasons time I can see him having a drunken Horner style end of season Twitter rant. I blame his Australian father! It's time for Sky to reshape, having 2 TdF winners is distracting them from anything else
Tim Renowden
Expert
Richie Porte told me that Kerrison is absolutely the brains behind the team and he has brought a lot of ideas from other sports which were bizarrely absent from cycling. Even things as basic as warming down after a race/training. I'm not saying Sky *isn't* more professional than some of the other teams, just that it's not always expressed tactfully and that puts people offside. People do make mistakes and the team can't help it if people lie to them in job interviews, but it does affect outsiders' perceptions.
Bones506
Roar Guru
I read the Team Sky book and that goes through Gert Leinders and a few other things and ppl make mistakes. The Tiernan-Locke component is very interesting. I am not a massive team sky fan but I respect their ability to train and ride to Tempo which not many teams have done previously. The Tempo riding is very structured and it has really put the screws into teams over GC length races. Tim Kerrison (Aussie and ex rowing coach) is the guy who put this into place and it has been very effective.
Alex
Guest
1) They are English and we inherently hate them for that 2) They are boring I'm very happy for them to be anti-doping - as long as it doesn't turn out to be untrue in 10 years time. So bloody hard to be optimistic these days.
Fin
Guest
I can't understand the bit of negativity to a team that's trying to be cleaner than the competition.
Lee Rodgers
Expert
But they did buy the 'how to wear Rapha and look uber-cool at all times' book, obviously...!
Lee Rodgers
Expert
Wiggins at the start of Scheldeprijs and Flanders was just so far removed from everything that it just made a pretty poor impression. He also made some comments about the Scheldeprijs trophy when he was being introduced to the crowd that were just plain rude. Then those comments about the French riders at P-R, really lacking in tact!
Tim Renowden
Expert
A lot of people just don't trust Sky. I mean, performances and on-road tactics aside (and plenty has been written about those), the issues with claiming zero tolerance while hiring former dopers and their advisors, like Gert Leinders, has damaged the team's credibility. This week it's the claims by Michael Barry that the team was using Tramadol, and the team's response being less than fully satisfactory. The team has always presented itself as being 'different', in terms of its professionalism, its attention to detail, its moralistic claims of being cleaner than other teams. Of course that creates an 'us and them' dichotomy and fuels perceptions of arrogance. I think it's really interesting that Sky has been trying to soften its image with this "Sky v OGE" YouTube malarkey, but it's a shame that Wiggins and Froome aren't involved. Those two really need a charisma makeover.
Bobo
Guest
Sky made a lot of enemies in their first year with their tactics - iirc they were being attacked in the feed zone as early as the Tour of Oman as payback for some of their antics. Things snowballed in 2011 when teams regarded Sky [and one or two other teams] as enjoying certain advantages in their preparation that were not open to other teams. In addition, Wiggins and Cavendish were allegedly surly and uncooperative to the press - particularly the foreign language press. They didn't exactly follow the textbook in Making Friends and Influencing People.