Thursday 21 June 2012

Will this be a British year in France?

With all eyes on London for the 2012 Olympics, British sports fans could be forgiven for thinking that they should look no further than their own shores for the chance to cheer on British sporting success this summer. However, just before the Olympics gets underway there is the small matter of Cyclings greatest priza; the Tour de France.

It is only very recently that this was even of interest in Britain. Usually cycling was reserved for continental Europe, however Greg leMonde & Lance Armstrong made sure that American's took note of 'le Tour', and last year Cadel Evans became the 1st Australian to wear the Yellow Jersey into Paris. However in the last few years British success on the track has finally transferred to success on the roads.

Now I don't claim to be the biggest cycling expert, but it seems Britain are slightly handicapped even before the Tour gets underway. The reason is that the two best hopes for success, Mark Cavendish and Bradley Wiggins, are in the same team - Sky.

While Mark Cavendish will look to collect sprint points for the Green Jersery, Wiggins is interested in the main prize of winning the General Classification - i.e. quickest man round the whole 3,469.9 km route. Cavendish will be defending his Green Jersey from last year while Wiggins best result was a 4th place finish in 2009.

So they are going for the different prizes, why should them being in the same team be such a hindrance? Well this is simply down to how competitive and gruelling the average Tour de France is.

Sprinters win points on flat stages. Usually there is a breakaway during the stage and the main sprinters team will all push up the pace to catch the breakaway - allowing their man to go for glory in the bunch sprint. Cavendish is such a ruthless sprinter that most other teams don't even bother to help reel in the breakaway as they feel it is not worth the energy given that, barring a crash, Cavendish will win any sprints. This means Team Sky will have to expend quite a bit of energy putting Cav in position to win stages and points towards the Green jersey.

As far as Wiggins in the GC goes. A GC rider will need a good time trial to put themselves in position, then make sure no one takes any time out of them on any mountain stages - or that no other GC contenders get into a breakaway group to take time from the field. The main GC contender cannot expend any energy that he doesn't need to. i.e. for 99% of the time he is sitting in the pack behind a few of his buddy's and it's only on Time Trial stages or big mountain stages that he has to work for his money.

So will a team of 7 support riders and 2 main competitors manage to put Cav in position to win enough points for a Green jersey, while supporting Wiggins energy levels enough to give him a chance of the Yellow jersey?

My feeling is that if Wiggins gets into contention for the Yellow jersey, Cav's interests will be secondary and he and Bernie Eisel will be left to their own devices to scrap for what points they can. That still leaves 6 support riders for Wiggins. If Wiggins is good enough, there is a chance those guys can provide enough support - but it is still 2 fewer support riders than the other main contenders will have.

Whatever the case I'm sure Sky manager, Dave Brailsford, will have to field endless questions about how he is going to get two guys round in the same team without compromising either of their chances. The bottom line is that both Cav and Wiggins chances are compromised by being in the same team and the only way both of them can win is by being that much better than the rest of the field. Cav probably is, but only time will tell if Wiggins form can continue into July and he can become the 1st British Tour de France winner.

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