Waiting for the highlights and trying to dodge tour info i happened to read this Inner Ring tweet, "Voeckler. No race radio, no power meter, no heart rate monitor. Not even a computer on the handlebars to show speed and distance."
Suspecting i'd got more than a whiff of the outcome didn't detract from another fine show by Tommy, winning with elan, and contrasting well against Sky's contolled domination approach.
Personally i enjoy both but for different reasons, one for sheer all-out determination and the other for openly outlining a strategy and goal from a long way out and then making it reality over an extended period of time. Both require great efforts to acheive.
But it got me wondering where does the tour go from here?
Some other teams are looking at replicating some of team Sky's techniques, there is no reason to think that other teams couldn't replicate Sky's entire approach successfully, to some degree though one assumes that the effectiveness of that team would relate to the raw talent available, which in part is determined by each team's budget. Presumably the consequence would be an even more finely tuned war of attrition, with each team more closely monitoring rider recovery and available daily energy and directing team strategy accordingly to produce a tour of minimum expenditure (which i believe is what Sky do - except for the TT where it's max sustained output).
Of course there is always individuality and personal ambition serving as drivers to shake things up, but i believe that this is where Sky's team management shows its worth. Contrast with BMC - Sky's riders are well drilled as a team, hence Cav's super domestique role and Froome's easing off having gapped Brad, now consider Tejay VG's selective deafness at the top of tack hill and his post race interview today which (to me at least) suggested he placed more emphasis on his own results than his team leader's, and that has an effect on the team, both directly and indirectly. Therefore a well managed team will look to eliminate this self interest in the favour of self sacrifice and will surely seek to repair any schisms through reallocation of resources, according to merit.
Suffice to say i believe the main GC teams, through this consitent elimination of minor losses, would evolve to become ever more strong as a unit and ever more controlling in part through team strength and tactics, but also crucially analysis of data in the race. And so the opportunities for advantage in the race become increasingly slight as teams become ever more capable of nullifying threats and cancelling each other out.
For this reason i imagined an alternative scenario, based upon the tweet above. One where the teams have all of these technological options available in training, but not in the race. Instead a rider must become more attuned to his own body, tactics are determined by the riders on the road based upon what they can see and time checks from the motorbike, rather than being plugged into a DS who has live tv coverage and race radio, and assistants processing ever more detailed data streams.
I wonder which would make for better cycling, which the better spectacle? Perhaps there are other possibilities? Perhaps Tommy's stage wins are only possible because of Sky's tactics?
