Free Inside Team Sky by David Walsh Page B

festers. So what I’d planned to do was ask Brad again, “Are you certain you will ride for Chris?” and he will say,
“Yeah, certain.”
    ‘Then I would say, “Okay, if you don’t follow team orders we will agree to fine you three or four months’ wages.” This would be a significant amount of money, maybe
as much as a few hundred thousand and I believed it would concentrate Brad’s mind. “Now, are you really committed to riding for Chris?”
    ‘I was then going to turn to Chris and say, “Right, Chris, if Brad goes against team orders, I’m going to give you that money.” And I believe Chris would have thought,
“Okay, that’s decent compensation if this guy doesn’t do what he says he will do.” This could have worked. To win, you have to have “goal harmony” but not
necessarily “team harmony”.
    ‘I don’t believe we ever had harmony inside the GB cycling team but when it came to the Olympics or the World Championships, everyone got on the same plan and would be totally
together.’
    Brailsford never needed to put his plan into operation because Wiggins would go to the Giro d’Italia, lose his nerve on the descents in the first week, pick up a debilitating bug in the
second week, and then struggle with a sore knee before being forced to quit the race.
    That compromised his preparation for the Tour de France and Dave Brailsford’s decision was made for him. The narrative was suspended for a while.
    Even in Team Sky fate sometimes runs the business.

CHAPTER FIVE
    ‘You are right, Watson. It mentions the legend in one of these references. But are we to give serious attention to such things? This agency stands flat-footed upon
     the ground, and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply.’
    Sherlock Holmes,
The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire
    On a Tuesday morning in 2010, 19 October to be precise, an urbane, bespectacled physician flew from his home in Belgium to Manchester and journeyed onwards to the
higgledy-piggledy assortment of buildings which comprise the National Cycling Centre in Sport City. He was well dressed and well prepared.
    Dr Geert Leinders had come for an interview for a part-time position on Team Sky’s medical team. He would get the job he came for. And he would get more. He would get to become a symbol of
cycling’s struggle with its own past . . .
    Haters, as they say blithely on social media, gonna hate. And when it comes to Team Sky there are an uncommon amount of haters. It is something you become aware of as soon as you start mixing
with the team. The dislike which so many people have for them, and the team’s bafflement at their own unpopularity, creates a microclimate around them.
    A lot of people simply detest Team Sky. Why? For what they are and for what they are not.
    Let us count the ways. Some of them.
    Team Sky are monolithical. Those black team buses with the darkened windows, each coming in at £750,000 a pop and looking like something out of Thunderbirds. And the predominantly black
uniforms with the azure stripe down the back, a stripe which is supposed to have some sort of meaning. They look like the secret police of the peloton.
    Team Sky are uppity. The Jaguars they use for support cars for instance – what’s wrong with a Skoda?
    Team Sky are in thrall to the new-fangled. All those PowerPoint presentations and business jargon buzzwords and new ways of measuring everything. Did Coppi use PowerPoint? He did not.
    Team Sky are slaves to analysis. Riding at a certain tempo for a certain amount of time instead of flaring briefly and dying? Just not old school. Team Sky would need an architectural blueprint
and several environmental impact surveys before tilting at a windmill. Analysis? Schmanalysis!
    Team Sky are keepers of bad company. Sky. The Murdochs. Not the Sopranos, but for a lot of people they might as well be.
    Team Sky are headhunters. The recruitment of so many good riders in a short space of time.