Inside Team Sky
Authors: David Walsh
Also by David Walsh:
Seven Deadly Sins
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2013
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Copyright © 2013 by DW Publications Limited
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For Jess, John and little Rory.
Team Sky characters
Staff:
Sir David ‘Dave’ Brailsford
Conductor of the orchestra that is Team Sky, Dave Brailsford is Team Principal. Brailsford’s Midas touch extends both to Team Sky – seeing Wiggins ride to 2012
Tour de France victory – and his role as performance director of British Cycling, leading Team GB to unrivalled cycling success including eight gold medals at the London 2012 Olympic
Games.
Rod Ellingworth
After a short spell as a pro, Rod found his real talent was coaching. Now Performance Manager within the team and another of the British Cycling
émigrés
, Ellingworth has brought a generation of successful British road racers through his U23 Academy.
Tim Kerrison
Head of Performance Support, Kerrison is the sports scientist of the group. Coming from huge successes with the Australian swimming team, his arsenal includes a deep
knowledge of the science but it comes with a humanity that allows him to be both man and genius to his athletic charges.
Alan Farrell
At the beginning of 2012, Alan Farrell was just a doctor with a passion for cycling; now he is Lead Doctor in the most successful pro team in the world. Covering all three
Grand Tours in his first year, Alan was thrown in at the deep end but like a boy who’d run away with the circus, he was in his element.
Mario Pafundi
Hailing from Southern Italy, Mario Pafundi is Lead Carer. He brings his infectious Italian charm to everything he touches, including aching legs, sleepy hotel staff,
colleagues at the dinner table. And because of how he’s lived his life, he sleeps on seven pillows.
Gary Blem
South African Gary Blem is Lead Mechanic. Humble and down to earth, Gary is a master of his craft and a dealer in respect and fairness. ‘Froomey,’ he says,
‘is a Kenyan and African.’
2013 Tour de France riders:
Chris Froome, 28
Chris Froome leads the team into the 2013 Tour de France. A poly-national if ever there was one, this summer Chris flies the Team Sky flag, and he intends to plant it at
the top of every mountain.
Richie Porte, 28
Richie is Tasmanian, a talented climber and comes into the Tour in the midst of an impressive season of racing including a win at Paris–Nice. What he lacks in height
he makes up for in ‘small man attitude’.
Geraint ‘G’ Thomas MBE, 27
Flitting between track and road, this Welshman is no stranger to success. With Olympic gold in both Beijing and London in the team pursuit, G goes into the Tour hoping to
show that in today’s Tour you can see tomorrow’s champion.
Kanstantsin ‘Kosta’ Siutsou, 30
Siutsou is a reliable engine from Belarus, useful for taking the strain for long sections of the stage. After leaving the 2012 Tour early due to a broken leg, Kosta has
been eyeing up 2013 from a long way out.
Vasil ‘Kiry’ Kiryienka, 32
The second big Belarusian engine, Kiryienka is known for putting himself on the ropes to preserve his team leader’s legs. Easily the most stylish rider in the
team.
Peter Kennaugh MBE, 24
Born on the Isle of Man, Pete Kennaugh is the youngest of the team and rides his first Tour de France in 2013. Not one to cower at big events, Kennaugh’s mettle
earned him a gold medal at the London 2012 Games.
Edvald Boasson Hagen, 26
The only Norwegian in the squad is also the only rider to have made it to every Team Sky Tour de France in the right colours. So classy is Eddy that everyone wonders why
he doesn’t win more.
David López, 32
This Spanish
domestique
is a new recruit for Team Sky after signing him at the end of the 2012 season from Movistar. Because Froome prefers to room with his
friend Porte, López will be given the one single room available to the riders at the team hotels.
Ian Stannard, 26
The third big engine of the group, this time of a British stripe. Sporting some of the biggest pistons in the peloton, 2013 will be Stannard’s first ever Tour de
France.
“Butterfly, don’t flutter by, stay a little while with me.”
Danyel Gérard, ‘Butterfly’
It is Thursday afternoon, 27 July, two days before the start of the Tour de France, 110 years after the first staging of this pilgrimage. Back then it was men and bikes, now
the cyclists are just part of the commercial juggernaut that follows the money and takes over part of Western Europe every July. For the start of this year’s race, the Tour has set up camp on
the island of Corsica.
For me this Tour is the beginning of the end of an odyssey with Team Sky. Eight months before, team boss Dave Brailsford had said, ‘Come and live with us, spend as much time as you like.
Look wherever you want, ask whatever questions you want.’ It started in Malaga at the end of January, a week there. Then there was a second training-camp week in Tenerife, a few more days in
Malaga, two days in Nice, two weeks at the Giro d’Italia and now, the Tour.
At the small airport in Figari, Marko Dzalo waits for me. It is the fourth time Sky has sent someone to pick me up. Always the designated driver is there before I land and the greeting is
friendly and businesslike.
‘How was your trip?’
‘Yeah good. All well with the team?’
‘Think so.’
It takes about twenty minutes to reach the hotel just outside Porto-Vecchio. Dzalo is a
soigneur
with Team Sky. Officially, the team prefers that he and the brotherhood of
soigneurs
are called ‘carers’. Superficially this distinction is nothing – ‘
soigneur
’ is the French word for ‘one who cares for’ –
why should it matter that Sky has chosen to go with the English version?
But it does matter. They prefer ‘carers’ because traditionally
soigneurs
have been carriers and providers of doping products and central to the culture that Brailsford,
performance manager Rod Ellingworth and head of performance Tim Kerrison despise. First you change the name, then the habits. To their own
soigneurs
they are saying, ‘We employ you
to care for the riders. Nothing more.’
To the rest of the peloton there is a message that some on the receiving end will chose to see as a two-fingered salute. Like Sky is saying, ‘We are not like you.’
Among themselves Sky’s rank and file staffers refer to the carers as ‘swannies’, which isn’t exactly a toeing of the party line.
Dzalo and I got to know each other during the Giro d’Italia earlier in the summer. One short conversation stayed with me. We’d stayed at a hotel in Tarvisio, an Italian town close to
the borders with Slovenia and Austria, and he had tweeted about his home country, the beautiful mountains he could see from the Italian side and the sign that said ‘12 kilometres to
Slovenia’.
Next morning he was loading suitcases onto the truck when he said, ‘You know my home town is just over that mountain. I could be there in no time.’
‘Does it make you want to drop everything and just go?’ I ask.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I left home to work in this sport. This is my life, where I now belong.’
He was sure about the road he’d taken, no interest in turning back. This struck a chord because I’d encountered the same sense of purpose a lot in Team Sky. It is common for people
in this sport to fall in love with the milieu and their lives on the road. A lot of the Sky people don’t feel like that, but they do like the environment around their team: the good
organisation, the intelligent approach to preparation, the behaviour demanded of both riders and staff.
Though they often complain about having to work longer hours than any other team, even on the worst days they don’t speak of wanting to leave. Not many of the drifters who move from team
to team stop off at Sky.
‘Room two-one-two, second floor,’ says Mario Pafundi as I pull my bag across the hotel car park. For two years running Pafundi has received the Team Sky staff award for
‘Happiest Ant of the Year’. Head
soigneur
– or ‘lead carer’ – and an important character on the team. Bright, conscientious, Italian Mario has charm and
good looks but nothing compares to the trick he runs with the room numbers.
Sky bring a team of nine riders and twenty-two support staff to the Tour de France and it is Mario who gets to the hotel early and assigns riders and staff to the available rooms. He then takes
all of the suitcases to their respective rooms and, over lunch, he sits down with the room list in front of him and memorises it. So when riders and staff arrive at the hotel they will quickly find
Mario, who’s never far away, and he will give them their room number.
Sometimes the key will be in the room, often it’s at reception. Mario’s efforts mean no one has to check in. ‘
Deux cent douze, s’il vous plaît
,’ and
on you go.