Great Britain’s Olympic performance director Dave Brailsford has decided to ride the wave of popularity created by their Olympic track team’s success and form a new professional road cycling team for 2010. Brailsford, the man at the helm of the country’s recent Olympic success, has announced he not only wants a British-based team in the Tour de France, but he wants a British rider to win the event by the year 2014.
The team, “Team Sky”, will be funded by the media organization BSkyB and managed by Brailsford.
Brailsford told the BBC, “The target is a British winner of the Tour within five years – achievable but very ambitious. But reach for the stars and you get the moon – that’s what we want to strive towards.”
It’s makeup will be primarily of British riders starting off with 25 cyclists in 2010, growing to 30 riders in time.
The idea is that Brailsford will pull together as much of the current British talent as he can, and use them to show the young riders the way. “Our key endurance riders are now all at different professional teams with obligations to their club,” continued Brailsford, “Hopefully in the future the core will be at Team Sky.”
Luring the likes of Mark Cavendish, Bradley Wiggins, and Garmin-Slipstream owner David Millar will be a tall order, but with the proper budget could become a reality.