The route is designed to be more open, with more climbs amenable to attacks, and power meters could be banned. But there is little to cause Team Sky sleepless nightsIn yet another attempt to make the Tour de France a more open race, which will be seen as a further move to break Team Sky’s domination, the organisers are to push for the abolition of the use of power meters. The ubiquitous device which helps a rider to gauge his effort by recording power output as he rides also “annihilates the glorious uncertainty of sport”, according to the Tour organiser, Christian Prudhomme.It remains unclear whether this will be put in place for the 2019 edition, which looks particularly mountainous and...
The Welshman put a history of dramatic scrapes behind him by keeping his cool in the time trial to all but secure Tour victoryGiven the variety of ways he has managed to fall off his bike over the years, it would have been unlike Geraint Thomas to complete a Tour de France without a jitter of some kind, but a disturbing skitter of the back wheel on an early corner in Saturday’s time trial barely registered on his personal Richter scale. The Welshman is legendary for the injuries he has accumulated, among them the broken pelvis with which he completed the Tour in 2013, the collarbone he smashed in the Alps last year and the collision with a metal spring...
A combination of athletic prowess and personal eccentricity made him a beloved national figure but the latest allegations against him and Team Sky have at the very least tainted that legacyThe golden throne outside Hampton Court Palace. The Sun’s stick-on sideburns. The ringing of a 23-ton bell to open the Olympics. The quirky victory speech on the Champs-Elysées. The crescendo of noise that greeted the smashing of the world hour record in the London velodrome. A kaleidoscope of memories. How far in the past they seem now, and how faded the images, as a beleaguered Bradley Wiggins seeks to preserve his reputation.The incessant attacks, including the particularly massive one provoked by yesterday’s release of the parliamentary report into doping in...
Dave Brailsford’s lofty ideals when setting up Team Sky have been exposed under the pressure of top-level competitionTo judge from Dave Brailsford’s words the other day it seems he still doesn’t get it. He was talking in a press conference about the business of the abnormally high salbutamol level in a urine sample taken from Chris Froome in Spain last September but not revealed – by this newspaper and Le Monde – until three months later. While re-emphasising his belief that Froome had done nothing wrong, he added that the finding should not have been made public.But when Brailsford set up Team Sky eight years ago it was on the basis of absolute honesty and openness. We are going to...
Whether Froome is cleared or banned over Vuelta a España doping test, Team Sky credibility has plunged such depths the court of public opinion is already making its own judgmentIt is more than 23 years since the curious case of Miguel Induráin, the then four-time Tour winner who ended up being declared “positive in France” for elevated levels of the asthma cure salbutamol, which was banned at the time in that country. It will be no comfort to another four‑times Tour winner, Chris Froome, that the substance is nothing new in cycling.For almost three months, the Team Sky leader has been involved in a battle to retain his first Vuelta a España victory after an adverse analytical finding for that...