Smaller, shorter training camps one key to boosting performance
Team Sky is to restructure the way it works with riders in advance of the start of the season, preferring to work with smaller groups in 2011.
The British ProTour team had a solid first season, but admits that it didn’t go as well as was initially hoped. Team Principal Dave Brailsford and others have accepted that the learning curve is a steep one and it will take time to fully deliver on its potential in races like the Tour de France and others.
In order to get the most out of the coaching input, the team will hold six week-long training camps in Mallorca early in the season, replacing the single, longer camp ran in Valencia in January.
“We just felt doing things this way would work better than one, full-on camp where everyone was together like last time. The Valencia camp worked brilliantly in terms of everyone getting to know each other, but out on the road it sometimes felt a bit crowded and was perhaps not as productive as it could have been,” said race coach Rod Ellingworth.
“By reducing the group sizes and timeframes this time around we should be able to focus better and hopefully get a lot more out of the team.”
There will be an element of the riders being able to pick and choose when to attend, and this can be structured around poor weather conditions in their normal training locations.
“The riders can drop in and out pretty much as they please but we’re expecting each of them to be there for at least two weeks. Some of them will no-doubt choose to stay longer if the conditions are not so great back home. Every member of the team knows there is a bed for them there whenever they want one.”
Mallorca is one of the most popular training destinations for pro riders due to the varied terrain and mild weather conditions during the off-season months. Several other teams are likely to be using the island as a training base; some will also ride the Challenge Mallorca events in February, and this is one possible option for Team Sky.
Long term timescale to hit top results:
When the team was being set up, one of the stated goals was to win the Tour de France within five years. This would ideally be achieved with a British rider, with many previously regarding Bradley Wiggins as the one most likely to achieve that.
His fourth place in the 2009 Tour de France raised expectations but, over a year on from that achievement, the bullish sentiments have been toned down a little as regards the Olympic gold medallist. Neither Team Sky nor Wiggins have said that a Tour victory is beyond the rider, but his 24th place in this year’s Tour has dampened expectations somewhat and led to a more cautious approach.
There are a number of promising young riders coming through, though, and so the team will work with them over the next few seasons to try to shape them as future Grand Tour contenders.
Indeed, Ellingworth accepts that it will take a certain amount of time for the whole team to get to where they want to be. “I’m not expecting this team to fully flourish until the fifth or sixth year,” he said. “We’re moving along nicely at the moment and by season three we should be really hitting full stride.”
Part of the inevitable delay is for the riders to settle in as a group. Another large factor is the need for coaches and management to gain the necessary experience to best organise and run things on a major road team. While the British Cycling core of the staff has been hugely successful on the track, road racing is very different. It has taken longer to get to grips with the diverse requirements of competing in Classics and major stage races, with far more uncontrollable elements coming into the equation.
Ellingworth says that a lot of the groundwork has been done and now it is a question of benefiting from the work that was started in 2010. “We’ve collected a lot of information this year and my task of properly analysing and implementing that begins now. Obviously, that data will continue to be collected with every successive season and the benefit we get from that will grow exponentially as a result,” he explained.
“In terms of our approach, I think the main changes going into next year will not be in logistics, but attitude. There’s a better understanding of what we have to do now, and how we have to work together as a team. Basically, we’re taking everything we’ve learnt from the first year and moving it forward.”
It’s reasonable to expect that the team will fare better in 2011 than it did in 2010. It clocked up 22 victories, including the opening time trial in the Giro d’Italia. Next season, taking a stage in the Tour de France is likely to be one of the big targets, and so too a Classic victory.
Many other teams will be chasing the same goals, of course, but the lessons learned in 2010 should position Team Sky to mount a stronger challenge and to thus take more top-level results.