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Sky unplugged

I was at the Sky training camp in Port de Alcudia, Mallorca last week, and the team is different. It’s more relaxed, more approachable and well, more confident. Looked at as a whole last year, the team’s first, was good, but I think this one will be a lot better.

That’s not a difficult prediction to make with Ben Swift already ripping up the road by winning two stages in the Tour Down Under, but there’s a new sense of purpose in the team. Part of it must come from having got the first one out of the way, and the world of uncertainly that went with it.

And then there was the pressure. Team principle David Brailsford told me that this time last year they didn’t even know if the team would
get into the Tour de France,
and he revealed; “The whole
deal depended on doing that.”

So under all that professional veneer there was some good old riverboat gambling going on. Team Sky got in the Tour as a wild card entry, “But it was never certain. I’d had assurances, but until the day they announced it I was constantly thinking is there something I don’t know,” Brailsford told me.

Lessons were learned too. One of my jobs at the camp was to get a big interview with Bradley Wiggins to go into the WH Smith’s Tour preview magazine, which will be out in June this year. He says he tried too hard to fulfil the role of a Tour favourite after his brilliant fourth place in 2009. “In the end I wasn’t me. I
stopped doing the things I
enjoy because in my mind I
thought ’Tour favourites
don’t do this’. I even stopped training the way I know works. There were other factors, like the Giro being so hard, but the main reason I didn’t do as well as in 2009 was that I stopped being Bradley Wiggins.”

The rest of the team were in good spirits. My mate from the next village to where I grew up in South Yorkshire, Russell Downing was typically buoyant. “I’m living it, drilling it and loving it,” he told me. It’s great to see Russell where he is today. It’s all he’s wanted since he was a kid but has had to go through Hell and high water to get it.

It was also good to see new pro Alex Dowsett there. Talented and such a nice guy. One of the team staff told me; “Every piece of kit you give Alex he says thank you. When you hand him his bike in the morning he says thank you. When you tell him what training he has to do he says thank you. And he never stops smiling.”

More bulletins from Team Sky throughout the year.