Battle for minor spots provides the excitement

Sky’s domination of Tour is not necessarily good for race’s appeal, writes Julian Dean.

I amnot a fan of complete domination and although I do have much respect for a team that implements science, programmes and systems that are so good they dominate sporting fields, to me it limits viewing interest.

Such is the case with the All Blacks and in cycling the All Blacks’ equivalent is Chris Froome and his Sky team.

The planning and execution of their resources has been near perfect and despite all the curve balls that a three-week event such as the Tour de France can throw at riders, Team Sky’s precision in their processes of how they have approached the 2016 Tour de France, has been outstanding.

With a team’s financial strength comes higher expectations and this produces a lot more pressure to deliver.

In such an environment the task of delivering is certainly complex, yet Team Sky seem to have turned this task into a perfectly finely-tuned systematic process and their capacity to do that, although somewhat unexciting from a spectator’s point of view, is commendable.

If you’re like me and are more interested in the spectacle of a great ding-dong battle and the onthe-seat-of-your-pants unpredictability that the Tour is known for, then you only need to look beyond the dominant race leader of this year’s Tour for an awesome sporting contest.

Although the top spot on the podium in Paris looks done and dusted, the race for second, third and the other minor placings changed daily.

From my own perspective as a performance manager for OricaBike Exchange, the standout has been the defence of the young rider’s jersey by our team’s young British rider, Adam Yates.

Up until 2016 our team’s focus in the Tour has been on stage wins and an attention on the overall has been something that’s existed only in forecast projections with the young talent that we scouted.

In more ways than one, Adam as a 23-year-old, has thrust us into this position sooner than we would have ever hoped and seeing young guys like him excel is very fulfilling and always one of the most inspiring aspects of sport across the board, albeit at club level or on the world’s biggest annual sporting stage.

Reflecting on the Kiwis’ influences on this year’s Tour, as a nation we have not been invisible and the standout has been George Bennett, who has consistently been in the breakaways vying to cement his place in the Dutch Lotto NLJumbo team, letting them know that despite his late callup, his place in the Tour de France has been well justified.

Top spot on the podium in Paris looks done and dusted.

Unfortunately, Shane Archbald, aka ‘The Flying Mullet’, had an ‘off’ at 70kmh in stage 17, fracturing a hip and was unable to continue, despite getting back on and riding to the finish, in the hope that it wasn’t that bad, only to find out that he was on his way to hospital for surgery; testament to the fact that although we won’t see him in Paris this year, we will see him in the future.

And who knows, we could see Kiwi statesmen, Greg Henderson, deliver his man, Andre Greipel, to victory in Paris tomorrow on the sprinters’ greatest stage in world cycling on the Champs-Elysees.

For sure, Greipel, who preTour was pegged as a favourite for the sprint stages, has until now been denied his awaited victories so is undoubtedly keen to deliver in Paris.