WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

TEAM SKY

May 2019

Ahead of their final Tour de France with Sky as financial backer, bosses at Team Sky are alarmed by a request that they change their rider line-up for the race. ‘As a parting gift for his support,’ the short memo reads, ‘we thought it would be nice if Rupert Murdoch realises his dream and wins the Tour this year.’ Unable to refuse, the team instal the 88-year-old as their team leader, requiring other riders to support him – including literally pushing him up the gruelling Col du Galibier and attaching tow ropes on the sprints. Somehow the bid succeeds.

‘It was actually fine,’ an exhausted Chris Froome says on the Champs-elysées. ‘I pretty much did the same for Wiggins.’

January 2020

Now just called ‘Team’, the cycling outfit urgently hunts for a new owner. It proves difficult, especially as many prospective backers make additional demands. Team Greggs is mooted, for instance, yet only if a pasty holder is installed on bikes next to the water bottle. Team Goop is another, but Gwyneth Paltrow’s insistence on riders cycling with her new, homeopathically proven Isotonic Jade Egg Saddle Insert aboard is rejected. After dismissing dozens of offers, the only remaining option is a consortium of frustrated Conservative Party backbenchers.

June 2020

Team Tory is a predictable disaster, not least because it’s clearly just an attempt to irritate Europeans on their own turf. Led by performance director Jacob Rees-mogg, riders Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas are issued penny-farthings and race in doublebreasted suits with no helmets, as a protest against EU health and safety laws. ‘You may say we came last, finishing a full fortnight behind the other teams, but what is more important is that we did things the British way, the sovereign way, without kowtowing to the elites,’ Rees-mogg tells reporters. ‘So who are the real winners? I will let you ponder that.’

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