Froome is motivated to attract new backer as Sky exit
TAINTED LEGACY: MISSION STATEMENT BECAME A HUGE NOOSE AROUND THEIR HEADS
TEAM SKY could be nearing the end of the road but Chris Froome believes the need to find new backing to save the team can serve as extra motivation in 2019.
The four-time Tour de France winner was speaking after broadcaster Sky – which owns and sponsors Team Sky – announced on Wednesday morning it would end its investment in professional cycling next year, plunging the future of the team into doubt.
It is understood Sky’s decision came as a ‘shock’ to team principal Sir Dave Brailsford, with the team’s riders and staff only informed on Tuesday night at the start of a training camp in Mallorca.
Froome said the news “came as a surprise” but insisted another season of success should be enough to convince new backers to come on board.
“The team has been incredibly successful and I’ve got every confidence that if the team carries on and delivers another season which has been on a par with previous years we should be able to find a new sponsor,” he said.
“We’ve got a year to replace (Sky). That’s not really for us as riders to be doing but it will be at the back of our minds and if anything will serve as extra motivation for us.”
Brailsford has set a deadline of the start of next year’s Tour de France in July to provide “clarity” on the future of the team, but must find new backers who are willing to look beyond the controversies which have dogged Team Sky in recent years and focus instead on their success.
Since launching in 2010, Team Sky have been among the most successful in the sport, winning 322 races including eight Grand Tours.
They delivered the first ever British winner of the Tour de France in Sir Bradley Wiggins in 2012 and have won six of the last seven editions.
Sky’s decision comes in the wake of a £30billion takeover by US cable company Comcast.
It is a challenge that Brailsford insisted he was ready to embrace.
“Every change brings opportunity,” he said. “We like to build things, we’re creators, we build. From our point of view I see it very much as an opportunity.”
SKY arrived in professional road cycling in 2010 vowing to win the Tour de France in five years and to be whiter than white in the process.
They will leave it at the end of next year having achieved much more than they set out to, but with their mission statement having become a noose around their necks as sustained success bred increased scepticism in a sport forever haunted by controversy.
But what a ride it has been. What an historic period for British cycling, with Sky at the vanguard of the sport’s evolution from the roadside to the mainstream.
The news yesterday morning that the broadcasting company is to end its decade-long backing of Britain’s – and the world’s – premier road team sent shockwaves across the sport.
From the professional teams that have trailed in their wake to the amateur riders who have benefitted from the vast array of amateur SkyRides over the years that was part of their drive to get people cycling.
At a professional level, their rivals will, no doubt, breathe a sigh of relief. For all the innovations Sky brought, they did so with financial backing that no rival team could match.
A new sponsor may well ride to the rescue but as other longstanding teams like QuickStep and BMC have discovered, the world is not awash with companies wanting to throw money at cycling.
Furthermore, Sky’s story proves that while you can achieve groundbreaking success, it does come at a price.
For the record, Sky’s list of accomplishments is second to none this decade:
■ 322 race victories including 52 stage races and 25 one-day races. ■ Eight Grand Tour wins including six Tours de France by three different British riders – Sir Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas – after none had done so previously
■ Froome also won La Vuelta Espana and Giro d’Italia, becoming the first rider in more than 30 years to hold all three Grand Tour winners’ jerseys at the same time.
But, in later years, Froome’s legacy has been tainted, as has Wiggins’ and that of Team Sky.
Froome was the subject of an anti-doping case after his La Vuelta win last year, though it was dropped by the UCI a week before the start of this year’s Tour.
The UK Anti-Doping Agency conducted a 14-month investigation into a ‘mystery package’ delivered to then team doctor Richard Freeman on the final day of the Criterium du Dauphine – won by Wiggins – in 2011.
A Parliamentary committee which held hearings into the case found the team had crossed an ‘ethical line’ by using the powerful corticosteroid triamcinolone to prepare for major races.
The substance is banned in competition but legal out of it. Wiggins denied that any drug had been used without medical need and hit out at the process, saying it was “so sad that accusations can be made, where people can be accused of things they have never done which are then regarded as facts”.
Team Sky also have plenty of detractors within cycling for tactics which many believe stifle racing and the size of their budget which last year was believed to be £37m.
There is a flip side. Having a British team at the front of the peloton has broadened the horizons of British cyclists.
One rider to have benefitted is Rotherham’s Ben Swift, who was with Sky from the outset in 2010, rode in support of Wiggins at the following year’s Tour de France, and has returned for 2019.
“The news came as a bit of a shock,” he told The Yorkshire Post from Sky’s training camp in Mallorca. “But at the same time you’ve got to look at the impact they’ve had, the races they’ve won, the faith they have shown in us. They leave a huge legacy.
“Sky have proven to be one of the best teams, not just in cycling, but in world sport, and not just for what they have done in the Grand Tours. Just look at what they have achieved in Britain alone, with the SkyRides.
“This is not new to cycling. This happens in our sport.”
Maybe so, but it leaves the futures of Swift, Froome, Thomas and British involvement at the very top of road racing, uncertain.