Will Cav leave Sky?

[raindog]

in his blog at the Grauniad Brad says..........
"It's going to be another tough race but a very realistic chance of gold. So physically, you'd think not a lot's going to change in nine days. If anything, I'm going to be fresher. And once you start thinking in those terms, that you're so fit and you've trained for the demands of the three weeks and you've actually got three days off in between the road race and the time trial, it shouldn't be a problem."
so it looks as if he thinks he can go for TT gold and still help Cav

 

[Berties]

Let time see what happens to the sky team,read all the negative dog toffee that the French and English media have written in the media the team would be dead in the water ,I should like to think it would go from strength to strength

 

[smutchin]

Brailsford quoted directly, I believe, in an article on the BBC, so it feels a bit more than press speculation, but I may be wrong.

Did he come out with it as an entirely unprompted off-the-cuff comment or was it in response to a question posed by a hack with column inches to fill?

The answer to that question might give us a clue as to how seriously we should treat the story.

d.

 

[dellzeqq]

I was surprised that he went to Sky.

Cav's got all the money he could ever spend - what he's after is history. Green jerseys and stage wins beckon, but time's winged chariot hurries near, and Sagan may be the coming thing (if he sticks around). Cav will want to maximise his 'take' for every TdF that he enters.

Being part of the Sky may or may not have cost him the green jersey and a couple of stage wins. I think he didn't quite realise that the team would be built around Wiggins - indeed Peta Todd said that sometimes you think you know something, but it doesn't quite sink in until it happens. However...it's doubtful that he'd have found the same level of expertise on tap that was available at Sky.

A lot of teams are going to have to up their game. Jens Voigt's '10%' will have stung some of the team sponsors. If a team comes along and says 'we'll build the team around you, and we're going to prepare with the same meticulous care that Sky employed he'd be crazy not to move. But........that's a big if.

 

[yello]

It's the question I dared not ask (though have alluded to). It doesn't surprise me there is speculation. And I'm afraid mine is going to a long response, because there's a few facets to consider, so hang in there....

I was a defender of the Sky stated tactics re Cavendish before the tour (still am) but even I was still a little surprised at how much effort was put behind the yellow jersey. Sky made sure of their goal. I did wonder how much of Cavendish's goal of Olympic gold actually suited Brailsford's Sky goal (but that's the sort of question you can never answer). It's possible that Cavendish thought/was told he could have more support in 2013. With the rise of Froome, how does that now play into Sky's thinking? And how will Cavendish respond to that?

Then I think of what Cavendish might want. I felt really excited that he might remodel himself into a classics rider (and he seemed to hint at that), and I thought Sky was the place for him to do that. He'd still be a green jersey contender but of a different sort, and one that could get by with less support (like Sagan). That'd suit Sky and Cavendish.

Above all else, let's not forget that Cavendish has had a good year by most standards. Ok, some might not feel that way because he wasn't all conquering at the TdF but he's notched up good wins none-the-less.

I've always thought this would be a transition year for him but I don't know. So much now depends on what he wants for next year and I really do think Sky have got a balancing act to perform. And let's not forget EBH - he's had to make sacrifices too this tour. It's probable he aspires to more than the 'super domestique' role.

Yep, it's going to be an interesting meeting at the end of the season for Sky as they set 2013 targets. They've had a great year, succeeded in their objective and come away with plaudits. At the price maybe of some of the team feeling a little neglected and unfulfilled personally. We'll see changes in the line-up, that's a given, but as to who they'll be depends so much on what those individuals want. And that we just can't know. It grieves me to say it but I think they'd let EBH go.

 

[smutchin]

Even with the Sky team set up as it was, Cav could have gone for the green jersey this year but he would have had to push himself much harder than he did to have a chance, and that would have compromised his fitness for the Olympics. As he said himself, one of the reasons he won Friday's stage so convincingly was that he'd taken it relatively easy on the rest of the race, not even attempting to contest some stages that he would normally have gone for.

Plus he had a bit of bad luck with crashes hampering his chances on stages he could have won.

In the circumstances, three stages is a pretty decent return, especially when one of those three is the Champs-Élysées and he got led out by the yellow jersey.

d.

 

[Saddle bum]

Remember the words of Brian Robinson in his book, "Are you a pro bike rider to make money or win races, there is a difference".

But there again BR was/is a Yorkshireman!

 

[jdtate101]

I really think Cav's goal this yr was (and still is) the Olympics. If you read his book, he was the only cyclist on the GB team NOT to win a medal in China last time round, and that REALLY burns him up. If he had to sacrifice a few stage wins to get that gold, so be it. He's made so much history in 2012 (world champ, 4 wins in Paris, only World Champ to win in Paris, All time sprint record) it's not been a bad year for him AT ALL. I think he's pragmatic enough to see SKY's a good place for him, but I do think if sky has a really strong GC contender like Froome next time around who can more or less win it on their own, that they can also build in a small core for Cav on the flat stages. The fact that SKY is a UK based team and he has a young family probably will be the prime factor in his thinking. Whatever he decides to do, we will be sure to see more of him going across that line first....

 

[Boris Bajic]

Cav will go to Man City, with Tevez coming the other way.

Adebayor will become Nicolas Anelka. He'll just wake up one day and be him.

Tom Daley will go to CFC as a direct replacement for Drogba. Drogba will become President of Ivory Coast.

Wiggins will leave Sky, start the Style Council and then move on to do some solo projects.

Voeckler will retire from bicycling to play Mork in a CanalPlus French-language remake of the 70s TV hit.

David Millar will start a Talking Heads tribute band. They will become bigger than the original band. David Byrne will start to dress and have his hair cut like Millar.

All of the above is true. Only a troll would doubt it.

 

[smutchin]

Just remembered another important factor - namely that Sky lost one of their key climbing domestiques very early. This is bound to have affected the way they approached the race. Using riders like EBH and Rogers to chase down breaks would have been both risky and might have compromised their ability to do the longer shifts required of them in the mountains.

d.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

Well, Brian Holm is clearly saying that he wants Cav at Omega Pharma-Quickstep and you know, I think I would much prefer it if he was at a team built around him. I'd much prefer to see top British riders in lots of different teams, as well as a British team that can win GTs and Classics. There are (and will continue to be) more than enough talented British riders coming through...

 

[swansonj]

Formula 1 has sometimes gone down the route of manufacturers setting up thinly disguised "second teams". Suppose Sky set up a team, called something else but still with Sky's money and organisational resources behind it, and ran one team to chase GC based round Wiggins/Froome and the other to chase sprint wins based round Cav. How long would it take for ASO to grant them an invitation? Or could Sky buy out an existing team for the same purpose? (Those are genuinely open questions, I freely admit I don't know enough to know the answers myself).

Or if Cav joins another team, and Sky stick with chasing GC and don't run a serious sprint contender, would you expect Wiggins/Froome still to help set up a few sprints for Cav for old times' sake?

 

[smutchin]

Brian Holm is stirring up a story out of nothing, but even though I'd like Cav to stay at Sky, I can see the appeal of trying to create HTC MkII at OPQS and it certainly wouldn't harm Cav's chances of winning more green jerseys.

Not sure Gerald Ciolek would welcome him with open arms though.

d.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

Not sure Gerald Ciolek would welcome him with open arms though.

Ciolek is a second-rate sprinter anyway.

 

[smutchin]

Oh, but if only he hadn't been forced to be Cav's slave, he could have won so many more stages himself!