Inside Team Sky (3 page)

‘Chris,’ I said, ‘what you mean is that you love him as
a son
, no qualification.’

A couple of days later we were talking again and he said there was something he wanted to say to me. ‘You know what you said to me the other day?’ I knew. ‘That meant a lot to
me. Thank you.’

Such sensibility hardly goes with the media manager’s job but Haynes isn’t your common-or-garden PR operator.

And when he came out of the Golfe Hotel in Porto-Vecchio, it was good to see him. We chatted for a bit; he then had to take a call, but when he came back a few minutes later he was excited.
‘You know what’s just happened?’ he said. ‘A beautiful butterfly came fluttering by, landed just there, and rose again and flew on. The butterfly was yellow-coloured,
totally yellow.’

He saw it as an omen, this
papillon jaune
, a portent of good things to come.

The butterfly, which drops into Corsica on its journey from North Africa, is called Clouded Yellow.

On the evening before the Tour begins, a staff meeting is called for nine o’clock on the team bus. This is the team’s fourth year and among the foot soldiers this
gathering has taken on the status of the pre-Tour call to arms. By 8.55 most of the staff are in their places, the nine available seats filled, everyone else standing or sitting in the aisle.
Excitement hangs in the air, tinged with apprehension for they know what they will have to do over the four weeks and whatever happens, it won’t be easy.

At the front of the bus a digital clock with illuminated red numbers moves silently from 8.53 through 8.54 to 8.55 but in a team where everything is timed, it starts to draw attention.

‘Who’s not here?’

They search for the missing.

‘He’s gonna be late, gonna be in trouble,’ someone says. There is laughter at the thought of imminent embarrassment.

Those who arrive in the nick of time are not jeered because they have cut it fine, but cheered because they are not actually late. At 8.59 everyone is present. Where’s the fun in that?
It’s like we’re in the Colosseum and the emperor has given everyone the thumbs-up.

The real emperor stands at the front of the bus. Forty-nine years of age, so neatly built his shaven head seems part of his DNA, clean-cut genetics. He smiles easily and is a natural
communicator. People listen. His lucidity will carry him through this meeting. It was curious that in John Dower’s beautifully made documentary about Bradley Wiggins’ victory in the
2012 Tour, Brailsford claimed he didn’t really have friends and was by nature a loner.

That’s not the person he seems to rank-and-file Team Sky staff, all of whom are comfortable in his company and most of whom like him. He takes out his iPhone and asks if he can take a
group photo of everyone on the bus. There is something vaguely flattering when the boss asks to photograph the staff and, immediately, people are listening. They look towards him, the digitally
reproduced shutter sound is heard among the grins.

He then talks about the memories this photo might evoke in six months’ time and what each individual will think when he looks at it. ‘What you will want to say is that they were the
best group of guys I ever worked with, as good as any team could have had. You also want to be able to say, “We were good together on that Tour, there wasn’t another thing we could have
done.”’

Brailsford then speaks of his role and their importance. ‘I am just the conductor of this orchestra, you are the guys who play the instruments and you were hand-picked for this job because
you are the best at what you do.’ What he doesn’t say but everyone knows is that the road to this point could be paved with the bodies of those who were hired but just didn’t fit
in.

Team Sky isn’t for everyone and Brailsford believes it’s in all’s interests if the ill-fitting are politely offered the opportunity to continue their careers elsewhere.
Turnover of staff was high in the first three years, but the boss is now much closer to the back-up team he wants.

After identifying himself as the conductor of the orchestra, he then expresses one of the team’s core values. He deliberately picks a senior staff member, operations manager Carsten
Jeppesen, to make the point. ‘If in our orchestra Carsten isn’t playing his violin properly it is my responsibility to come along and say, “Look, Carsten, we need to have a
chat.”

‘What I mustn’t do is speak to Mario [Pafundi] and say, “You know what, Carsten’s fucking this up,” because then Mario might say, “Yeah, he’s always
fucking things up,” and instead of my dealing with the problem we make it worse by talking to other people, who in turn talk to even more people.’

So, in this team, bitching about colleagues will not be tolerated. Every suggestion is coated with a sense of what seems entirely reasonable. ‘We have come here without our wives,
partners, children, and now for the next three weeks we have to make sure that we don’t allow our personal lives to affect our jobs.’

During the course of the Tour different staff members will talk about how much harder they work in Team Sky than they have done in their previous teams and here, from the boss, is a warning
about personal issues impinging upon their work with the team. Yet this isn’t as uncompromising as it seems, for when Rod Ellingworth’s little daughter gets sick in the first week, he
is given the go-ahead to get himself home and take care of what matters.

Brailsford wants everyone to know that he believes they have helped get the team into a position to win its second consecutive Tour. ‘We can look at what we’ve done and ask,
“Could we have done more to this point?” I don’t think we could have. The team is in good shape, we have good results this year and the nine guys we have chosen are all fit and
well. But now we want to have a really good three weeks.’

He then gets into details that other teams mightn’t see as important. ‘Health is going to be a big issue. It is not a question of “if some of us get sick” but “when
some of us get sick”. So we take every precaution to ensure we don’t help spread infection.

‘It is common practice in France to shake the hand of the person you are meeting. If you can, avoid shaking hands. Smile, whatever, but try to cut down on the hand-shaking. And make sure
to use the alcohol disinfectant. Before you eat, before you get on the bus, use it. We had an issue in the Giro with three riders sick, including Christian [Knees] and Bradley who sat alongside
each other on the bus.’

He talks about security around the team. ‘We have to be really vigilant about this, especially in relation to riders’ food and drinks. If you see anybody, around the bus or any of
our vehicles, who you’re not sure about, don’t let it pass. Ask him what he’s doing, mention it to Rod or me. One guy contaminating one drink is all it would take to give us a big
problem, so you’ve got to stay alert to the danger.’

The team doesn’t shy away from expressions of self-belief. When he left the Garmin team to join Sky in 2009, Wiggins equated it to ‘leaving Wigan [then a lowly Premier League
football team] and joining Manchester United’. Once, in the car, Ellingworth complained about the team’s arrogance in that first year, saying too much about what they would do before
they had done anything.

‘Like what Brad said about Manchester United and Wigan. You can’t say that, although on that I do agree with Brad. We are Manchester United and they are Wigan.’

Brailsford was a shade more subtle in his closing message. ‘If you all do your jobs, we have the best support team on this race and you guys will show that.’

He had spoken for about twenty minutes and then asked Ellingworth to run through some organisational and logistical issues. Ellingworth reminds everyone that just because they’ve got Tour
de France stickers on the cars doesn’t give anyone a licence to drive irresponsibly and the gendarmerie have told all the teams they won’t tolerate it. (Brailsford had earlier reminded
staff that anyone who drinks and then drives a vehicle will be fired, a rule that is non-negotiable.)

Lead mechanic Gary Blem asked Ellingworth to remind all drivers to fill their tanks at the end of the day so that those staff members who take care of the cars don’t have to refuel them
early the next morning. There was also a request to hand in the keys at the end of the day so that Neil MacDonald, the Jaguar mechanic in charge of the cars, can keep them all together.

Dave Brailsford then asked Tim Kerrison, head of performance support and the man most informed on the minutiae of the riders’ form, to talk about what he expected from the team over the
following three weeks. Kerrison is quietly spoken and thoughtful, a man who’d never claim to have invented hot water when all he’d done was stumble across a geyser. Deadpan tone and
natural understatement lend weight to everything he says. Overall, the team were in very good shape. He spoke about some of the riders about whom there were worries. David López, who had
been sick in the Critérium du Dauphiné, was fully recovered now, and Vasil Kiryienka, who seemed tired in the Dauphiné, was now back at his best.

Kerrison also spoke about how Pete Kennaugh had come through and was showing what the management always thought him capable of. He talked about the excellent form of Richie Porte and Chris
Froome; he considered Porte was in the shape of his life and when he mentioned Froome he said Team Sky had by far the best rider in the race.

Kerrison delivers this verdict as if giving a weather report. Nicolas Portal, the young French
directeur sportif
, also spoke, as did Blem and Pafundi.

Towards the end, Brailsford spoke about the media and how it was better if he dealt with most of the enquiries. This would happen mostly by the bus and, though there would be occasions when it
might be necessary for Tim and Rod to offer their opinions on things, and while it was appropriate for the
directeur sportif
to handle questions related to that day’s race, most of
the other stuff was best left to him.

Brailsford made the point that when journalists didn’t get what they were looking for from him, they would go to Ellingworth or Kerrison trying to get what they actually wanted. Everyone
needed to be aware of this and make sure there was as little leakage as possible. ‘While we want to be open and transparent and polite at all times, we also want to stay in control of
this.’

I’m sitting in the third seat on the left, listening and wondering if, unknown to myself, I am being controlled?

The meeting peters out which seems disappointing as it had been almost inspiring when Brailsford was in full flow. I’d wondered what he might do for a final flourish. ‘I see you
stand like greyhounds in the slips, Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot: Follow your spirit, and upon this charge Cry “God for Harry, England, and Saint George!”’ But
this leader has come from the School of Dr Steve Peters and no need to rouse the chimps when a good night’s rest is what everyone needs.

Seven months before, I’m sitting in the reception room at the Manchester velodrome waiting to meet Brailsford for the first time. Given what he has achieved with Team GB,
it is strange that this is a first meeting, but my love for cycling had been destroyed by the Armstrong era and for six or seven years I’d given the sport a wide berth.

Only a couple of weeks have passed since the Texan was kicked out of cycling, and the whiff of scandal still hangs in the air. Brailsford wants to talk about the stuff I’d written along
the way. ‘What I can’t imagine is how you dealt with the sense of alienation from a lot of the guys you were working alongside at the Tour de France,’ he says. ‘Many of them
must have hated what you were doing?’ That was, I say, the least of my problems.

We watch a group of children ride little bikes round the indoor BMX track, kids of four and five learning to be comfortable on a bike. This new facility has been built off the success of the
track teams that Brailsford nurtured and though he doesn’t claim any credit, he is due some.

Team Sky was conceived in this velodrome amid unanimous agreement that they would replicate their approach to track cycling on the road. Sports scientists would work with the riders, everything
that the team would do on and off the bike would be thought through and evidence based, and there would be no doping.

He wants me to know where he’s come from. ‘I place a lot of trust and have a lot of confidence in Dr Steve Peters. We sat down and said, “Okay, well, our values and our
beliefs, they are going to be unquestioned.” It was very clear we are very anti-doping and that’s how we’re always going to be. If we couldn’t do it that way, if it was
impossible, then we’d stop. Winning is great but it’s not about winning, it’s the process that I like.

‘How do you help somebody to improve? That’s what we enjoy doing and we’re thinking about it all the time.’

Depending upon your starting point this is either admirable or PR fluff, and I am inclined to seeing it as the latter. But I would remember Brailsford’s views on the process being more
interesting than winning during the final stages of the 2013 Tour. Though Chris Froome had a healthy lead at that point there was still the 32km time trial from Embrun to Chorges and three tough
Alpine stages to get through.

Rain was forecast and with two longish descents on the course, the time trial couldn’t be regarded as a formality. Early that afternoon Brailsford retired to his room at the Hotel Les
Bartavelles in Embrun to take an hour-long nap. More tired than he thought, he slept on and was woken by the France 2 commentary of the time trial, right at the point in the late afternoon when
there was a spectacular crash.

‘I was woken by the commentator screaming “
Chute, chute!
” Half awake, I thought it had to be Froomey. Then I saw it was the French rider Christophe Peraud who started
the day ninth and was then out of the race.’