I hate to see injuries take competitors out of action, but it means we may see the Tour de France ridden in a substantially different way.
It has been a catastrophic period for Team Ineos (formerly Team Sky). The team lost two former Tour de France winners to crashes. Chris Froome crashed before Stage 4 of the Criterium du Dauphine and suffered a broken femur, elbow, and ribs during a reconnaissance ride for the days individual time trial. Geraint Thomas crashed in the Tour de Suisse just a week later.
Geraint Thomas after his crash (photo courtesy, BBC)
I want to emphasize that I am neither happy nor excited to see anyone involved in serious crashes and sustaining terrible injuries. I wish both men a successful recovery, and I hope they will return to racing soon.
But as a sports commentator, I must ask this question: Could the sport benefit from what has transpired for Team Ineos?
Before the crashes, Team Ineos was primed to enter the Tour de France with an impressive team–with Froome, Thomas, potential future grand tour winner, Egan Bernal, and two super mountain domestiques, Michal Kwiatkowski and Wout Poels.
It is no secret that Ineos has a large budget–several magnitudes larger than many of the teams they frequently compete against. Last year, Ineos’ closest rivals (Movistar and Sunweb) had budgets of 14 and 19 million, respectively, almost half of what resides in Sky’s coffers, which is about 31 million.
This gulf in finance has allowed Sky to assemble super teams for the grand tours, teams comprised of several riders who are good enough to challenge for the title in their own right – and with many going on to do just that. Bradley Wiggins had Chris Froome and Richie Porte (moved to BMC to challenge). Chris Froome then had Geraint Thomas, Richie Porte, and Mikel Landa (moved to Movistar to challenge). Geraint Thomas had Chris Froome and Egan Bernal.
The bottom line is clear: Team Ineos (formerly Team Sky) has had an unprecedented grip on the world of cycling, the likes that are rarely seen in the sport – and never seen in the post-doping era of cycling.
Established in 2010 under the tutelage of Sir Dave Brailsford (although David only had a CBE at the time), Team Sky set the ambitious task of winning the Tour de France with a British rider and doing so within the next five years. Seen at the time as a nearly impossible task, over the next decade Team Sky developed into the sports biggest name and won 8 Grand Tours, including 6 of the last 7 Tour de France’s.
That dominance has catapulted the sport of cycling back into the public limelight. And it has gone a long way toward repairing the damage caused by the admission of Lance Armstrong’s doping network. However, not everybody has welcomed the succession.
Whilst Team Ineos’s dominance has helped the image of the sport, some commentators believe that it has simultaneously ruined the racing.
And that brings me back to my starting question. This year, it seems that Team Ineos will submit a substantially weaker team for the tour–certainly weaker than previous iterations–and the team is unlikely to sustain the tried and tested method of controlling the race from start to finish.
So what will happen?
One answer is that another team will inhabit the space Ineos could vacate. Even if that happens, however, I do not believe any other team has the ability to copy the stranglehold that Team Sky has had on the competition.
Another answer, then, is that we will be treated to an older style of racing where solo attacks are more common and also succeed more often. More riders will be able to hang on to the lead group, creating larger and more hectic mountain racing, and producing a race that can rapidly change from one day to the next.
To reiterate, I do not ever want to see an athlete of any sport sustain injuries that rule them out of the competition. But despite the unfortunate events that have transpired, a silver lining can (perhaps) be visualized–a more attacking Tour de France could be in store.
And who doesn’t want to see that?
