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  • One of their main sponsors is Sky Italia, so generally they have a decent dig at the Giro (ten stage wins, top ten finishes etc). Vuelta is usually a significant target if they come up short in the Tour (2011, 2014). A bit like Armstrong, winning the TdF ensured maximum exposure back home, but Sky have slowly started to make real improvement in the classics and one day races, so I would hope they start to make a more serious tilt at winning other GTs, to firmly establish Froome as a great GC rider, rather than someone who only bothers with the TdF, winning it by bringing the best team money can buy.

    That said, people complaining it was processional miss the nuance of Sky's approach: no sprinter, no-one in breakaways, no-one hunting stage wins. Doms for the flat, doms for the climbs, doms given days off to sit back of the bus to recover for key stages. Wout Poels looked very impressive but he would have been doing sweet FA during transition stages, sitting in the bunch out of the wind, saving energy until the mountains. Although it was processional, Sky's win was very clever.

  • Agreed.

    You've also got to look at the quality of the domestiques, Rowe, Thomas and Stannard are all capable of leading the team through the cobbled classics, Poels won Liege this spring, Nieve won a stage at the Giro and the KoM jersey, Landa finished third in the Giro last year, and probably would've bettered that result this year if he'd not been ill, Henao is a consistent performer (and stage winner) in week long stage races and Kiryienka is the reigning World TT champ.

    Basically, any single rider on the Sky Tour team could realistically lead a team elsewhere.

    Everyone goes on about their budget, but both Katusha and BMC have similar budgets, yet they have nowhere near the amount of success that Sky have, so that budget is used wisely.

  • I wonder what Yates might have done had he had a team behind him, with Chaves and his brother there for the climbs (although arguably Chaves would be leader in that scenario). Instead OBE went there like they always do, with a combination of sprinters and puncheurs to nab stage wins, and Yates had virtually no support in the mountains. It makes his 4th all the more impressive.

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