Team Sky 2012 Season in Review

When Team Sky announced its five year goals the aim to have a British rider on the podium in France wearing yellow sounded fanciful. Forget five, Sky and Bradley Wiggins had a dream year in which they completely dominated the Tour de France and racked up stage win after stage win. Mark Cavendish joined the team to once again team up with Wiggins after they rode Madison together. His season on the team started well but tensions came to fore with Cav unhappy over his lack of support and a dedicated lead-out train. He still snared three Tour stages but in 2013 Sky will be GC focused not only in July but have the squad to challenge for GC wins in every race they enter.

UCI World Tour Standings: Wiggins and Sky lead the way

Standings after Clàssica San Sebastian

Individual 

1st Bradley Wiggins (UK) Team Sky 601 Points
2nd Joaquim Rodriguez (ESP) Katusha 414 points
3rd Vincenzo Nibali (ITA) Liquigas-Cannondale 400 points
4th Tom Boonen (BEL) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 370 points
5th Peter Sagan (SVK) Liquigas-Cannondale 351 points
6th Simon Gerrans (AUS) Orica-GreenEdge 270 points
7th Chris Froome (UK) Team Sky 266 points
8th Samuel Sánchez (ESP) Euskaltel Euskadi 252 points
9th Jurgen Van Den Broeck (BEL) Lotto-Belisol 237 points

2012 Clasica Ciclista San Sebastian Start list

Defending champion Philippe Gilbert has decided to skip the 2012 edition of the 2012 Clasica Ciclista San Sebastian and his BMC team will now be lead by Greg Van Avermaet. Past winners of the race in the this years edition include the 2010 winner Luis Leon Sanchez, 2008 winner Alejandro Valverde and the 2006 winner Xavier Florencio. 

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Full start list after the jump

Arise Sir Wiggo

Bradley Wiggins once again rewrote and wrote the history books by winning gold in the men’s 2012 Olympic ITT. Wiggins becomes the second Tour de France winner to have won gold in the ITT after Miguel Indurain in 1996. However it is the first time a rider has won both in the same season. In long ITT’s Wiggins has been unbeatable in 2012 and rainbow jersey at the Worlds may be the next goal for the British rider. Wiggins also became the most successful Olympic athlete from Great Britain in winning gold which was his 7th Olympic medal. Chris Hoy was knighted after his success in Beijing four years ago; will Wiggins be the next cyclist to be knighted?

Final Classifications Winners at the 2012 Tour de France

General Classification: Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky)87:34:47
Points Classification: Peter Sagan (Liquigas-Cannondale) 421 points
King of the Mountains: Thomas Voeckler (Europcar) 134 points
Young Riders Classification: Tejay van Garderen (BMC) 87:45:46
Team Classification: RadioShack-Nissan 263:12:01
Combativity Award: Chris Anker Sørenson

TDF: Standings after Stage 18

The 2012 Tour de France has been won by Bradley Wiggins who becomes the first British rider to have won the overall classification. The ceremonial jaunt into Paris will be a celebration of Sky’s achievement in 2012. The team has won five stages, which could become six on the Champs-Élysées and has proven itself as the strongest team in the peloton. Sky haven’t won the team classification but proved on the roads this year that they controlled proceedings and wore down any GC rivals to Wiggins. Chris Froome is the only rider who finished within five minutes of Wiggins which is an amazing achievement for Sky. Vincenzo Nibali and Cadel Evans were touted as potential winners or at least podium finishers but both finished off the pace. Nibali will finish in third and make it a Grand Tour podium treble after his Vuelta de España GC win as well as two podium finishes at the Giro d’Italia. However this has been a British tour de force and Sky have shown that there is a new approach to winning Grand Tours which is sport science. 2012 may go down as one of the most boring Tour de France’s but it will be a watermark for how teams approach the GC and follow and approve the Sky model.

Snippets from Le Tour

With the Tour deep into its last week and the second rest day now concluded, it is time to cast an eye back over the race. Team Sky look like they will deliver upon their promise to have a British rider win the Tour de France GC within five years of their existence. With this Tour shaping up to be the most successful in the history of British cycling, success has come in stage wins and being awarded classification jerseys.

Stage 11: Albertville to La Toussuire-Les-Sybelles 148km

During Stage 11 the Tour will ascend four categorised climbs of which two are hors catergorie or HC. The first of the HC climbs is the imposing Col de la Madeleine which is a 25.3km climb that reaches to 2000 meters and has an average gradient of 6.2% when approached from the north. On several sections that climb averages up to 9.5% gradient and will surely test the GC men early on. While for the sprinters it will be the beginning of a day that will they will dread but keep Paris in mind to get through the pain. The climb up the Madeleine begins after only 14.5kms on what looks certain to be a day on which Vincenzo Nibali and Cadel Evans really test the strength of Team Sky and the resolve of Wiggins.

The last time the Col de la Madeleine featured at the Tour was in 2010 when the French rider Anthony Charteau was the first over the summit on Stage Nine. Charteau went onto win the climbers classification that year and his teammate Thomas Voeckler, who will be wearing the maillot pois in today’s stage, may just emulate his countryman and try to increase his lead in that classification. In the 2010 Tour, Evans was wearing yellow on the Madeleine suffering the effects of a crash on the previous stage in which he fractured his left elbow. Evans was dropped and his Tour was over. Once again the Madeleine will be crucial to the overall hopes of Evans but with three more climbs in the stage alone, it won't be the last roll of the dice for the BMC rider.

Col de la Madeleine 2000m - (25.3km @ 6.2%)

©ASO

The next climb the peloton will encounter comes after 70kms of racing with the Madeleine said ‘au revoir‘to once again. With Madeleine gone, the race flattens out all too quickly for some with the days sprints points on offer. There is an intermediate sprint point at the base of the Col de la Croix de Fer at 70kms into the stage. From there the sprinters will suffer until the finish at La Toussuire. This HC Mountain is only 22.4kms in length but has an average gradient of 6.9% and its summit is 2,067 meters. The first rider to crest the Col de la Croix de Fer will be awarded the Souvenir Henri Desgrange as the Croix de Fer is the highest point of the 2012 Tour. The award is a tribute to the founder of the race and is awarded to the rider who is first over the highest point of the Tour as well as €5000. The last time this HC climb was included in the Tour was during Stage 17 of the 2008 Tour which finished at Alpe d’Huez. The winner of the Souvenir Henri Desgrange that year was Peter Velits. Once the riders crest the second HC climb of the stage they will descend to Les Chambons and from there, they will begin to climb again.

Col de la Croix Fer 2067m (22.4km @ 6.9%)

©ASO 

The Cat 2 climb Col du Mollard will seem to be a minor blemish after the first two climbs and is a little bump on the descent from the Croix de Fer to Saint Jean-De-Maurienne which is 604m above sea level and hosts the depart of Stage 12. The final climb of the day is the 18km climb up the Cat 1 La Toussuire and will be the first alpine summit of the 2012 Tour. The climb is just 67m higher than the Col du Mollard but its average gradient of 6.1% is actually lesser than the 6.8% of the Mollard. This will be the second appearance of La Toussuire in the Tour after it debuted in the 2006 Tour. Michael Rasmussen won that day over Carlos Sastre on a stage that also rode over the Col de la Croix de Fer and Col du Mollard. Floyd Landis looked to have thrown away any attempt at the overall as he finished 23rd on the stage and dropped out of the top ten. Óscar Pereiro rode himself into yellow after finishing third in the stage, just two seconds ahead of Cadel Evans and all but secured yellow. The Climb has appeared in the Critérium de Dauphiné twice since then and the last time the Dauphiné went up La Toussuire, Bradley Wiggins was also in yellow, as he will be today.

                          

Col du Mollard 1638m (5.7km @ 6.8%)

©ASO 

La Toussuire 1705m (18km @ 6.1%)

©ASO 

Wiggins may concede yellow today knowing he has the superior the ITT among the top ten which would also see him skip the yellow jersey press conferences. Wiggins is growing into the role of wearing the yellow jersey along with the pressure and responsibilities that come with it. However he has broken the record for most consecutive days spent in yellow by a British rider and is second in British riders to have worn yellow and equal 113th overall with four days in the jersey. It is still a long way to Paris and handing the jersey over to Froome may just help Wiggins recharge mid-Tour and enable him to come out and attack his rivals In the Pyrenees to ensure that heading into the Stage 19 ITT he is holding a substantial time gap over them. This way, Sky is still in charge of yellow and Froome gets a chance to audition himself for a future, or alternative, GC winner for Sky.

At only 148kms the stage looks likely to be explosive. The Tour director Christian Prudhomme has begun to favour the shorter alpine stages in which the GC men are forced to come out an attack with such stages no longer characterised by 200kms of rolling terrain before one final massive climb. Of the 148kms, the four categorised climbs together will equate to 71.4km which will certainly test the legs of the peloton. After the ascent of the Mollard there could be a new virtual leader on the road who will go on to put real time into Wiggins up La Toussuire. This may end up being Froome if Sky allows him to make his own attacks which could also alleviate any pressure from Wiggins. Either way there will be attacks or breakaway attempts in a stage that promises fireworks and GC shakeup that the 2012 Tour is yet to really experience.

Stage Profile

Stage and mountain profiles all courtesy of ASO at letour.fr