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The Independent
3 days ago
- Sport
- The Independent
Luke Rowe: ‘Cav should sleep with one eye open – Tadej Pogacar is coming for his Tour de France record'
The battle for the Tour de France 's yellow jersey lasted 12 days, but really it lasted about five minutes. That's how long Tadej Pogacar waited before attacking Jonas Vingegaard on the Hautacam, the first hors-categorie mountain of the Tour, with an acceleration that made the Danish double champion look like a weekend rider who'd taken a wrong turn. There is still a week's racing to come in the Alps, featuring a couple of menacing stages including Tuesday's summit finish atop Mont Ventoux. But Ventoux is more likely to be a stage for Pogacar to write another piece of Tour history than for Vingegaard to trim his four-and-a-half-minute deficit. As the remaining 167 riders recuperated in Montpellier on Monday, the second rest day of the Tour, there were reminders of the Team Sky /Ineos era, when their dominance over the peloton was such that, at least in French media, they were portrayed as a boa constrictor squeezing all life and joy out of the race. Pogacar's reign is different in that he pulls off virtuoso attacks even when his team don't have full control of the peloton, but there is that same sense that we already know who will be wearing yellow in Paris. 'You build up to the Tour de France for months and months,' says Luke Rowe, the Team Sky/Ineos Grenadiers road captain who marshalled Chris Froome, Geraint Thomas and Egan Bernal to glory in the yellow jersey. 'We talk about it all year, and what you hope doesn't happen is you hit the first mountain stage, and there's a clear divide between first and second. You hope they go toe to toe like they did a few years ago – one got the lead, the other got the lead, they're knocking lumps out of each other. But what you don't want to see is the first HC mountain top finish, and one of them attacks with 10k to go and distances the other by two minutes.' Pogacar tightened his grip with another win in the mountain time trial which followed, and added a few more seconds to his advantage by beating Vingegaard to some bonus seconds on Saturday. At 26, the Slovenian is on the brink of adding a fourth yellow jersey to a palmares which includes the Giro d'Italia, the world title and nine Monument Classics. He is the best cyclist of his generation. He might be the most dominant athlete on the planet right now. 'It's not just what he's won, it's how he wins it, and the diversity of the races he competes in. Whatever the terrain, he's one of the favourites. People sometimes compare Ineos to UAE and Poggy, but we were not close to what they're doing. We focused on one race a year. We won the Tour de France but we weren't that dominant. Poggy from UAE to Paris-Roubaix to Liege and goes bam, bam, bam, knocks seven shades of s*** out of everyone.' Alongside his podcast with Geraint Thomas and his punditry duties – Rowe will be part of TNT Sports' coverage for the final week of the Tour – he is a sporting director for French team Decalthon AG2R after hanging up the bike last year. So what would he choose now if he was on Visma's team bus: keep attacking Pogacar knowing it's doomed to fail? Or switch focus to stage wins and a podium place? 'I think their theory is, we will apply pressure any moment we can apply pressure over the course of three weeks. And the end result, they hope, is that in the third week, Poggy has a bad day in cracks. That's their battle plan and I think they have to continue to live by that battle plan, and their belief is that after 18 stages, Vingegaard deals with the fatigue better than Poggy does. They have to continue with that and hope that they do have a Poggy ' I'm dead ' situation [when Vingegaard cracked Pogacar on stage 17 in 2023]. That's what they're praying for, that's what they're banking on. 'For a guy who's won the Tour de France twice, does Vingegaard care if he finishes second or third or fourth? No. I've been in these situations with big leaders where they go, I'd rather risk everything to win and finish 10th than settle for third. But I would probably open the door up slightly to stage wins, like they did with Simon Yates a few days ago. I would open up a little bit – let's start taking the breakaway opportunities, obviously Wout [van Aert] can compete in the sprints and the punchy finishes. So continue with the battle plan, but maybe just put a little bit of focus on stage wins.' The beauty of the Tour de France is in the many sub-plots that fizzle in the background, and there is plenty of intrigue left in Jonathan Milan's fight for a first green jersey, in Lenny Martinez's bold bid to be the King of the Mountains, in Oscar Onley's surprise podium bid, in the handful of stage wins that Pogacar decides not to have for himself. But the bigger picture is how quickly Pogacar is surging towards Mark Cavendish ' record tally of 35 stages. When Cavendish finally set the new record last summer, Pogacar was one of the first to congratulate him. 'Don't beat it,' Cavendish joked to Pogacar. 'I won't!' came the response with a grin. Pogacar had 14 stage wins then; now he has 21, with one or two more surely due this week, and why not: career-threatening injury can strike at any time in this absurd sport and Pogacar must make hay while the sun shines on the Alpine roads ahead. He is right to scoff at suggestions that he should hold back and allow lesser riders in breakaways to triumph. 'I'm paid to win, not give away races,' he said last week. Cavendish's record was described by many including these pages as insurmountable. But nobody counted on Pogacar being this dominant, on rewriting what's possible in the sport. Aged 26, he could run at a modest 2.5 stages per Tour and have the record sewn up by the time he's ready to ride off into the sunset. 'He's not going to be riding the Tour de France when he's 35 – maybe he will but I don't think so. But certainly until he's 31, 32, he could still be winning stages of the Tour, so it's vulnerable. If I was Cav, I'd be sleeping with one eye open.'
Times
4 days ago
- Sport
- Times
As always with Dave Brailsford, the big questions remain unanswered
For journalists at the Tour de France, moseying about the team buses in the morning is a ritual. An opportunity for a catch-up with people you may see only at this time of year. There is also a chance to interview sports directors and staff members. Riders remain inside the buses, which is understandable. They've got a race to ride. For the past two weeks I've avoided the Ineos Grenadiers bus. The one time I stopped and chatted, it was because he wasn't anywhere to be seen. I am talking about Sir Dave Brailsford, who returned to the team two weeks ago after five years away. Journalists who have spoken to him sense that he has come back from his time in football a little chastened. Cycling was the hometown girl he fell in love with as a teenager. They enjoyed a great life until his head was turned by a more glamorous woman from a very rich family. We are speaking, of course, of Manchester United. Alas, the rich lady grew tired of him. So here he is back with his first love, trying to start again, but she has changed, grown older and is not quite who she once was. I avoid Brailsford because I know he is not going to answer questions that need to be answered. At the time he founded the professional cycling team Team Sky, he insisted that it would never cross the ethical line. In 2016 my colleague Matt Lawton discovered that in 2011 a secret package had been couriered by a staffer at British Cycling from Manchester to Team Sky, who were then racing in France. When Lawton asked Brailsford about the package, the Team Sky boss said: 'If you didn't write the story, is there anything else that could be done?' Decide for yourself what he meant by that. As you can about the 40mg injections of the corticosteroid triamcinolone, given to Bradley Wiggins days before the start of the Tour de France in 2011 and 2012. Team Sky claimed in an application to cycling's governing body that the rider needed the medication for therapeutic reasons. Wiggins suffered from allergies. Medical experts question the appropriateness of the treatment, especially as triamcinolone is also a performance-enhancing drug. A 2018 report by the digital, culture, media and sport select committee into Team Sky and British Cycling was damning. It said the use of the triamcinolone 'was not to treat medical need, but to improve his [Wiggins's] power-to-weight ratio ahead of the race'. It added: 'This does not constitute a violation of the World Anti-Doping Agency [Wada] code, but it does cross the ethical line that David Brailsford says he himself drew for Team Sky. In this case, and contrary to the testimony of David Brailsford in front of the committee, we believe that drugs were being used by Team Sky, within the Wada rules, to enhance the performance of riders, and not just to treat medical need.' There are, of course, many other unresolved issues. Why did Dr Richard Freeman, then a senior doctor working with both Team Sky and British Cycling, order a consignment of 30 testosterone sachets in 2011 and have them delivered to the National Cycling Centre in Manchester? After the testosterone was discovered, Freeman lied that it had been sent to him in error and the head of medicine at Team Sky, Dr Steve Peters, asked Freeman to get the supplier to confirm this in writing. Peters would later say that he didn't tell Brailsford about the testosterone. That was remarkable. And, of course, the testosterone delivery had been ordered by Freeman. It was strange that Freeman should have been the one person who had to properly explain his part in all that went down at Team Sky and British Cycling. In a 'fit to practice' case initiated by the General Medical Council and processed by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service, the tribunal concluded that the testosterone was ordered for the purpose to giving it to an athlete. Freeman lost his licence to practice. Mary O'Rourke, the barrister in Freeman's corner, believed Brailsford should have been a witness at the tribunal. 'Dave Brailsford is the spectre missing at these proceedings,' she said in her summing-up. 'He would have been able to answer an awful lot of questions about what was going on at British Cycling and Team Sky.' Subsequent to losing his medical licence, Freeman received a four-year sport's ban from UK Anti-Doping. Freeman loses his career, Brailsford gets a knighthood. The knight of the realm has never said a bad word about his team's former doctor. You may wonder why all this is recalled right now. Well, other journalists were beating a path to the Ineos Grenadiers bus last week. They were lining up to ask Brailsford about his head soigneur, David Rozman. An investigation by the German state broadcaster ARD had linked, but not named, a Team Sky soigneur with the doping doctor Mark Schmidt. At a Munich court in January 2021, Schmidt was found guilty of 24 counts of using doping products and given a prison sentence of four years and ten months. During the case there was evidence of 2012 mobile phone messages between Schmidt and a person involved in cycling. According to an ARD report, the person Schmidt was communicating with worked for Team Sky. They said they knew the person, but because of a statute of limitation law in Germany, they could not name the Sky employee. Last weekend the Dublin-based Sunday Independent said the person involved was Rozman, then the Sky soigneur who is still with Ineos Grenadiers. The most concerning message was one from Rozman to Schmidt asking if he still had the 'stuff that Milram [a team he had previously worked with] used' and if he could 'bring it for the boys'. Later in the week Ineos issued a statement saying it was aware of the allegations surrounding a team member: 'These allegations have not to date been presented to the team by any appropriate authority, however the team has made a formal request to the International Testing Agency (ITA) to request any information it considers relevant. The team reiterates its policy of zero tolerance to any breach of the applicable Wada codes, historic or current.' That wasn't an untypical response from the team. Ineos could have said it had spoken to Rozman and asked if he had been party to the now much publicised conversation with Schmidt in 2012. Had he written those messages? If he had, what did he mean when asking Schmidt if he could bring stuff 'for the boys'? Rozman, they say, remains part of their Tour de France team. And so the journalists at the Tour tried to get some answers. The first question to Brailsford about the latest controversy drew a straightforward: 'I am not commenting on that.' Another journalist wondered if it was fair to have the staff member (Rozman) taking so much heat? Brailsford replied: 'Did you hear what I just said? I won't be commenting.' As he retreated to the sanctuary of the bus, Brailsford said, 'F***ing hell, guys, come on.' The questions, as always, remain unanswered.
Irish Examiner
05-07-2025
- Business
- Irish Examiner
Cathal Dennehy: Is there a difference between doing the right thing and being seen to do the right thing?
For many years he was seen as the man with the Midas touch – a lateral-thinking, high-performance brainiac who could waltz into any environment and make it a success. He was the guru behind the medal rush in British Cycling, the puppet-master pulling the strings as Team Sky took over the Tour de France. The guy who could halt the slow-motion train wreck that is Manchester United. He was Mr Marginal Gains. This is exclusive subscriber content. Already a subscriber? Sign in Take us with you this summer. Annual €130€65 Best value Monthly €12€6 / month
Irish Independent
04-07-2025
- Business
- Irish Independent
A month after leaving Man United, Dave Brailsford is back leading Ineos Grenadiers in hunt for Tour de France stage wins
'He's like a kid in a sweet shop, talking about climbs and getting back to the mountains,' revealed team CEO John Allert. 'That's the battlefield that he knows and loves. We have welcomed him back into the team with open arms. He's a not-so-secret weapon for us to use and we plan on using him to the fullest extent we can.' Brailsford spearheaded British Cycling's Olympic success in Beijing and London before taking charge of Team Sky and masterminding their domination of the Tour during the 20-teens, winning the race with Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome four times, Geraint Thomas and then Egan Bernal under the Ineos rebrand, although the glorious era was tainted by accusations the team 'crossed an ethical line'. His arrival at Old Trafford was not universally appreciated, and he clashed with staff at the club during his efforts to improve processes behind the scenes. Now Ineos owner Jim Ratcliffe has redeployed Brailsford to his beleaguered cycling team, who are without a grand tour win in four years and have little hope of claiming the yellow jersey at the Tour de France, which begins in Lille on Saturday. The long-term task to regenerate the team as regular Tour de France podium-botherers is enormous after losing so much ground to the modern alphas of the peloton, Visma Lease-a-Bike and UAE Team Emirates. 'It's obvious we want to win the Tour, but there's no point just saying you want to win it,' said Allert. 'We've got to do more than we're doing, clearly, to get better than the people that are dominating it at the moment.' But in the short term, winning a couple of stages at this year's race would at least show that Ineos can compete and come out on top, if not over three weeks then in selected moments. 'Winning stages is going to be really important,' added sport director Zak Dempster. 'I think we need to be realistic in GC [general classification], but I think we need to be brave and bold and move the race where we can, and hopefully take time in creative ways. It's no secret that, face to face, there are guys who are stronger than us, that's the reality. But at the same time if we're smart then nothing's out of the question in terms of GC.' Thomas is riding in his final Tour and will largely play a support role behind team leader Carlos Rodriguez, who finished fifth two years ago, although the 39-year-old Welshman would love one last stage win to go with the three on his palmares from 2017 and 2018, the year he won the yellow jersey. 'I'd love to be competitive and go for a stage, a stage win would be amazing,' Thomas said. 'You've got to be in super great condition for that. And then obviously being alongside Carlos deep into the mountains and helping him as much as I can, off the bike as much as on it. He knows what he's doing anyway, but I think just playing a role in the team of just trying to share my wisdom – sounds a bit... but you know what I mean.' Thomas abandoned last month's Tour de Suisse after twisting his knee in a crash but played down concerns over his fitness before the race. 'I got my foot caught and twisted, and I also hurt my hamstring and calf. The idea was to rest up properly and be ready to go again rather than continue to race and possibly make it worse or tweak something else. I got some good training in afterwards behind the motorbike, I've done the best I could. 'It was frustrating because it would have been nice to see exactly where I was at compared to everyone else rather than just training. But no issues now.' Ineos's best chance of a stage win may come in the first of two individual time trials on this year's course, through Italian time-trial specialist Filippo Ganna, who has seven stage wins at the Giro d'Italia and one at the Vuelta a Espana but still needs a victory at the Tour de France to complete the grand-tour set. 'Maybe the first days we try to be more conservative, try to go all-in for the TT, and then after that's the start 100pc of my Tour,' Ganna said. 'I would like to try [and win a stage]. Why not this year?' Ineos Grenadiers at 2025 Tour de France Thymen Arensman, Tobias Foss, Filippo Ganna, Axel Laurance, Carlos Rodriguez, Connor Swift, Geraint Thomas, Samuel Watson.
South Wales Guardian
28-06-2025
- Sport
- South Wales Guardian
Sir Mark Cavendish ‘proud' to have Douglas cycle track named in his honour
The winner of a record 35 Tour de France stages was back home in Douglas on the Isle of Man, where the cycle track at the National Sports Centre where he first started racing as a child was renamed the Sir Mark Cavendish Raceway. On the track where he used to compete every Tuesday night during his youth, Cavendish, who retired from racing at the end of last season, joined local schoolchildren on a ride as a new podium and signage was unveiled. 'When I was young, I would always be smashing it around that half-mile circuit,' Cavendish told the PA news agency. 'It was always fun, it was always something I would look forward to, and it taught me how to race. 'This is where I started, where every Isle of Man rider started racing, so it's very sentimental. It's not just like having something named after me – I'm very proud to have it at the place that started and shaped my career. It's truly an honour, it really means something on a personal level.' Cavendish used to revel in the weekly races run at the venue by Dot Tilbury, who remains a fixture at the National Sports Centre. Tilbury helped launch the careers of Cavendish, former Team Sky rider Pete Kennaugh and Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Mark Christian, but the sessions she runs have been about more than finding future professionals. 'Cycling is fundamentally built on community and volunteers,' Cavendish said when asked about her contribution. 'That's what I loved about it. That's what got me started. 'It doesn't matter where you're from or what you do, everyone is joined by this single love, which is the bicycle – whether it's racing, using it for transport or for fitness. 'Historically club racing here in the Isle of Man and the UK in general takes a community who just love it, love seeing the racing and love what the bike is about. Without them these things don't exist and I think we need to treasure that.'
