team sky tour de france 2017

Who Won the 2017 Tour de France?

Chris froome.

Froome was joined on the Tour’s final podium by second-place finisher Rigoberto Uran (Cannondale-Drapac) and third-place finisher Romain Bardet (AG2R La Mondiale). Team Sunweb’s Michael Matthews won the green jersey as the winner of the Tour’s Points Classification, and his teammate, Warren Barguil, won the polka dot jersey as the winner of the Tour’s King of the Mountains Classification. Orica-Scott’s Simon Yates won the white jersey as the Tour’s Best Young Rider.

Froome is now only the fifth rider in history to win four Tours de France, joining Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, and Miguel Indurain (who each won five). One more win and Froome joins these legends at the top of the Tour’s record book. ( Show off your love of the maillot jaune and all things Tour with our ultra-soft yellow jersey tee !)

RELATED: Froome Wins 2017 Tour by Less than a Minute

What About Next Year?

This was by far the most challenging of Froome’s four victories. Heading into the middle of the third week, four riders were within 90 seconds of the as lead. But Froome held tough in the Alps, and added to his advantage in the Tour’s final individual time trial. In fact, the Tour’s two individual time trials were all Froome really needed: his winning margin came entirely thanks to time gained during Stage 1’s time trial in Düsseldorf and Stage 20’s in Marseille. Were it not for those two stages, he might not have won the Tour.

RELATED: What it Would Take to Beat Froome

Winning a record-tying fifth Tour de France won’t be easy. Most of Froome’s competition from this year’s Tour should return next year, perhaps even more confident in their chances given how close they came to defeating him this July. Froome should also expect a more serious challenge from Movistar’s Nairo Quintana (a three-time podium finisher at the Tour), who suffered through the worst Tour de France of his career after a second-place finish in May’s Tour of Italy. As an added twist, Quintana might be joined at Movistar by Mikel Landa, who this year finished fourth despite riding in support of Froome at Team Sky .

And then there's Richie Porte, who crashed out of the race in spectacular fashion on Stage 9 . Porte looked to be capable of challenging Froome all the way to Paris this year, and he'll certainly return to next year's race eager to avenge the demons that sent him home early in 2017.

But Froome’s toughest future challenger didn’t even compete in this year’s Tour. Team Sunweb’s Tom Dumoulin, who’s only 26, skipped the Tour after beating Quintana to win the Tour of Italy. Dumoulin, a Dutchman despite his French-sounding last name, is younger, almost as good of a climber, and an even better time trialist than Froome.

Even if it loses Landa this off-season, Froome's team will certainly surround its leader with the best support riders money can buy. And Team Sky will need to: with a refreshed Quintana, a healthy Porte, and a confident Dumoulin joining this year's strong challengers, Froome will have his hands full.

Check out the crazy gear customizations from this year's Tour:

Stage 20 - Chris Froome

As expected, Team Sky’s Chris Froome put more time into his closest rivals during Saturday’s individual time trial in Marseille, extending his lead in the 2017 Tour de France. Froome finished third on Stage 20, six seconds behind the stage winner, Macej Bodnar of Bora-Hansgrohe. But the Briton finished 25 seconds ahead of Cannondale-Drapac’s Rigoberto Uran and 1:57 ahead of AG2R La Mondiale’s Romain Bardet, the men who entered the day in third- and second-place on the Tour’s General Classification. With only one (somewhat ceremonial) stage left in the race, it’s now safe to declare Froome the winner.

RELATED: Chris Froome Delivers on Stage 20 Time Trial

Who’s Really Winning the Tour?

Despite failing to win a stage during the three week event, Froome did everything he needed to do to win his fourth Tour de France . In the end, the Tour’s two individual time trials were all Froome really needed: he put enough time into the rest of the field during Stage 1 in Düsseldorf and Stage 20 in Marseille to win the Tour. Were it not for those two stages, the Tour might have had a different champion.

The day’s other big winner was Bardet. By far the weakest time trialist of the Tour’s overall contenders, the Frenchman lost second-place overall to Uran, but held onto a podium spot—by one second—over Froome’s teammate, Mikel Landa. It’s Bardet’s second straight podium finish at the Tour, cementing his status as France’s best chance to take the host nation’s first victory since Bernard Hinault won the race back in 1985.

Stage 19 - Chris Froome

Team Sky’s Chris Froome finished safely in the peloton at the end of Stage 19, and therefore still wears the yellow jersey as the leader of the 2017 Tour de France . Dimension Data’s Edvald Boasson Hagen won the stage in Salon de Provence. The Norwegian escaped from the remnants of the day’s big breakaway to take the second stage of his career. There were, however, no changes to the Tour’s General Classification. With two days left, Froome leads the Tour by 23 seconds over AG2R La Mondiale’s Romain Bardet and 29 seconds over Cannondale-Drapac’s Rigoberto Uran.

RELATED: Edvald Boasson Hagen Wins Stage 19 as Froome Marches One Day Closer to Yellow

With only Saturday’s individual time trial remaining before the Tour’s traditional promenade into Paris on Sunday, Froome looks set to take the fourth Tour de France victory of his career. His lead is small, but he’s a much better time trialist than the men closest to him on the Tour’s GC. Barring a crash or a poorly-timed mechanical, Froome should extend his lead in Marseille on Saturday before riding triumphantly into Paris on Sunday.

Stage 18 - Chris Froome

With only three days left in the 2017 Tour de France , Team Sky’s Chris Froome wears the yellow jersey as the Tour’s overall leader. Froome finished fourth on Stage 18, the Tour’s final summit finish, and had no problem responding to the attacks from his rivals. Team Sunweb’s Warren Barguil, the leader of the Tour’s King of the Mountains competition, won the stage atop the Col d’Izoard, the third-highest summit finish in Tour history. It was the Frenchman's second stage victory of the Tour de France.

RELATED: In Stage 18, the KoM Was Finally About the Best Climber

AG2R La Mondiale’s Romain Bardet finished third on the day and took a four-second time bonus, so the Frenchman is now in second-place overall, 23 seconds behind the yellow jersey. Cannondale-Drapac’s Rigoberto Uran finished fifth, two seconds behind Froome, and now sits third overall, 29 seconds off the yellow jersey.

The 2017 Tour de France exits the high mountains on Friday, which means the best chance for Froome’s rivals to close the gap to the yellow jersey has passed. Friday’s Stage 19 is the longest of the Tour, but Froome’s team has enough firepower to keep his lead safe heading into Saturday’s individual time trial in Marseille. It’s there that Froome, by far the strongest time trialist of the Tour’s GC contenders, should put the finishing touches on his fourth Tour de France victory. Barring a crash, sickness, or a mechanical, Froome has effectively won the race. The only question that remains is which riders will join him on the podium in Paris.

Stage 17 - Chris Froome

After a third-place finish on Stage 17, Team Sky’s Chris Froome still wears the yellow jersey as the overall leader of the 2017 Tour de France. Froome was able to withstand a series of attacks from AG2R La Mondiale’s Romain Bardet on the Col du Galibier, the highest mountain in the 2017 Tour, and picked up four bonus seconds, thanks to his third place finish. Cannondale-Drapac’s Rigoberto Uran was able to follow Bardet’s attacks as well, and is now tied with Bardet in second overall, 27 seconds behind Froome. The stage was won by LottoNL-Jumbo’s Primoz Roglic , a former world-class ski jumper who’s starting to put together quite an impressive resume as a pro cyclist.

With only one more day in the mountains (and four more days in the race), Chris Froome and Team Sky look to be firmly in control of the 2017 Tour de France . Froome had no problem following Bardet’s attacks, and his top lieutenant, Spain’s Mikel Landa, was able to respond as well. Bardet and Uran will certainly try their best to dislodge Froome on the steep Col d'Izoard at the end of Stage 18, but with fewer climbs leading up to it, Sky will have less work to do in keeping the race under control. The day’s big loser was Astana’s Fabio Aru, who wore the yellow jersey for two days earlier in the Tour. Aru was gapped coming over the top of the Galibier, a gap which grew on the long descent to the stage finish. He fell from second to fourth, and needs an incredible performance on Thursday to maintain any chance of winning the 2017 Tour de France.

Stage 16 - Chris Froome

Team Sky’s Chris Froome survived the crosswinds of Stage 16 to hold onto the yellow jersey as the overall leader of the 2017 Tour de France. It was one of the most stressful days of the Tour as strong winds made the race hard right from the start. With about 18km to go things really blew apart, and a small group emerged filled with the Tour’s toughest men. At the finish in Romans sur Isère, Team Sunweb’s Michael Matthews out-sprinted Edvald Boasson Hagen and John Degenkolb to take his second stage of this year’s Tour.

RELATED: Michael Matthews Wins a Windy Stage 16

As the race heads into the Alps, the top-4 riders on the Tour’s General Classification are exactly where they were at the start of Stage 16 with Froome, Fabio Aru , Romain Bardet, and Rigoberto Uran separated by only 29 seconds. Quick-Step’s Daniel Martin was the day’s big the loser. The Irishman started the stage in fifth overall, 1:12 behind Froome, but failed to make the leading group when crosswinds split the race. He finished 51 seconds the leaders, and fell to seventh overall. Now 2:03 behind Froome, Martin’s chances of a podium finish in Paris may have disappeared.

Stage 15 - Chris Froome

Team Sky’s Chris Froome survived a flat tire on the day’s big climb to hold onto the yellow jersey as the overall leader of the Tour de France . The Briton finished in a select group of the Tour’s main contenders on Stage 15, which was won by Trek-Segafredo’s Bauke Mollema. The gap between Froome and his closest rivals remains the same: Astana’s Fabio Aru is in second place at 18 seconds, and AG2R La Mondiale’s Romain Bardet is in third at 23 seconds. And to underscore how competitive this year’s Tour has been, Cannondale-Drapac’s Rigoberto Uran is fourth, only 29 seconds behind the yellow jersey.

Froome’s team has been the biggest reason why the three-time Tour champ remains on the verge of a fourth victory, but on Stage 15 they went deep to get Froome back to the front after his flat tire on the lower slopes of the Category 1 Col de Peyra Taillade. The Tour’s second Rest Day couldn’t come at a better time, as they’ll need all the rest they can get following four hard days of racing in the Pyrenees and Massif Central. This is the closest a Tour de France has ever been heading into the final week, with four riders within 29 seconds of one another on the Tour’s General Classification. Froome’s leading the race for now, but with two hard days in the Alps still to come, anything could happen.

Stage 14 - Chris Froome

Team Sky’s Chris Froome is back in the yellow jersey as the overall leader of the 2017 Tour de France. The 3-time Tour champ finished 24 seconds ahead of the former overall leader, Astana’s Fabio Aru, on Stage 14’s uphill finish in Rodez. Team Sunweb’s Michael Matthews won the stage, his team’s second victory in a row following Warren Barguil’s win on Friday. Froome now leads Aru by 18 seconds and AG2R’s Romain Bardet by 23.

RELATED: How Froome Took Back the Yellow Jersey in Stage 14

Froome once again occupies the driver’s seat of the 2017 Tour de France , thanks largely to the strength of his team (and the weakness of Aru’s). Knowing that the finish of Stage 14 was a tricky one, Team Sky moved Froome to the front in the closing kilometers, sensing an opportunity to gain back some time on the twisty roads leading to the uphill finish. Conversely, Aru’s decimated Astana squad left the Italian isolated, and he could be seen struggling to hold his position as the race wound itself up for the sprint in Rodez. Sunday’s Stage 15 is even harder, with a Category 1 climb 40km from the finish in Le Puy en Velay and another technical run-in to the finish line. If Aru loses more time, his chances of defeating Froome could disappear.

Stage 13 - Fabio Aru

Astana’s Fabio Aru still wears the yellow jersey as the leader of the 2017 Tour de France. Despite being completely isolated throughout much of Stage 13, the Italian national champion held onto his six-second advantage over Team Sky’s Chris Froome, winner of three of the past four Tours de France. Team Sunweb’s Warren Barguil took the Bastille Day stage victory, a dream come true for the Frenchman.

RELATED: How Aru Swept the Yellow Jersey Away from Froome in Stage 12

Aru still leads the Tour, but his team has been decimated. He’s lost two of his strongest teammates in the past three days, and now faces the prospect of defending the yellow jersey without anyone to support him in the mountains. On the other hand, Froome’s team is by far the strongest in the Tour, led first and foremost by Mikel Landa, who rode himself into the Tour’s top five on Stage 13. With the Pyrenees behind them and two cards to play during the Tour’s final week, Sky looks well-positioned to win their fifth Tour de France .

Stage 12 - Fabio Aru

Astana’s Fabio Aru now wears the yellow jersey as the leader of the 2017 Tour de France. The Italian national champion finished second on the Stage 12 summit finish in Peyragudes, which was won by AG2R La Mondiale’s Romain Bardet. Team Sky’s Chris Froome entered the day wearing the yellow jersey, but faltered on the steep climb to the finish line. The three-time Tour champ now trails Aru by 6 seconds. Bardet remains in third place, but sits only 25 seconds behind the yellow jersey.

RELATED: The 23 Raddest Bikes from This Year's Tour

After days spent thinking it was Froome’s Tour to lose , we finally have a more open race. Aru may be wearing his first yellow jersey, but he’s an experienced grand tour contender who won the 2015 Tour of Spain and twice finished on the podium at the Giro d’Italia. He’s certainly capable of defending and extending his lead on Stage 13’s short, mountainous course. Then there’s Bardet, a Frenchman who has now won mountain stages in three consecutive Tours. He might actually be the Tour’s most dangerous rider as he’s confident attacking on both the climbs and the descents. And of course, Froome can’t be ruled-out. He had a bad day on Stage 12, but he only lost a handful of time. With a time trial on the Tour’s penultimate day, he only needs to stay about 30 seconds away from the lead in order to have a chance at taking back the yellow jersey.

Stage 11 - Chris Froome

Stage 11 ended with a fifth sprint victory for Quick-Step’s Marcel Kittel , which means Team Sky’s Chris Froome will wear the 51st yellow jersey of his career as the leader of the 2017 Tour de France. The Briton finished safely in the peloton at the end of Stage 11 to earn the same finishing time as Kittel, who easily blew away the competition to win the stage in Pau.

RELATED: How Kittel Won Stage 11

Froome still leads the Tour by 18 seconds over Italy’s Fabio Aru and 51 seconds over France’s Romain Bardet. But the Tour heads to the Pyrenees on Thursday and Friday, with two hard stages that will give Froome’s rivals another chance to try and steal the yellow jersey. Despite Froome’s small advantage, his team is packed with climbers and is relatively fresh after two easy sprint stages. So while he’s only winning it by 18 seconds, the Tour is still Froome’s to lose.

Stage 10 - Chris Froome

Stage 10 ended with a field sprint, which means another day in the yellow jersey for Chris Froome, the current leader of the 2017 Tour de France . The Team Sky rider finished safely in the peloton at the end of Stage 10, which earned him the same finishing time as the day’s winner, Germany’s Marcel Kittel (who took his fourth stage win of the race on Tuesday).

RELATED: Chris Froome Wins His 50th Yellow Jersey

Froome is still in the Tour's driver's seat. The Briton leads the Tour by 18 seconds over Italy’s Fabio Aru and 51 seconds over France’s Romain Bardet. A field sprint is expected again on Stage 11, so Froome’s lead is probably safe for another day. But the Tour heads to the Pyrenees on Thursday and Friday, giving Froome’s challengers another chance to try and take the yellow jersey from him. Froome’s still the favorite to win the 2017 Tour de France, but he and his team will have to work hard to defend his chances.

Stage 9 - Chris Froome

Team Sky’s Chris Froome survived a dramatic day in the Jura mountains to hold onto his yellow jersey as the overall leader of the 2017 Tour de France . Cannondale-Drapac’s Rigoberto Uran won the stage in Chambéry, but the Briton finished third, which means he added four bonus seconds to his advantage. He now leads Astana’s Fabio Aru by 18 seconds and AG2R La Mondiale’s Romain Bardet (last year’s runner-up) by 51.

Froome heads into the Tour’s first Rest Day with a narrow margin, but he’s still in control of the Tour as several of his key rivals came up short on Stage 9. As expected, the day’s final climb of the Mont du Chat did all of the damage.

RELATED: Uran Wins Crash-Filled Stage 9, Froome Keeps Yellow

Trek-Segafredo’s Alberto Contador was the first favorite to get dropped. The Spaniard fell earlier in the stage and proved unable to follow the pace of the yellow jersey group at the end. He finished the day over four minutes behind Froome, his chances of a high finish gone.

Movistar’s Nairo Quintana also struggled. The three-time podium finisher conceded 1:15 to Froome by the finish, and now sits in 8th-place overall, more than two minutes behind the yellow jersey. He’s not out of contention, but he doesn’t appear to be in contention either.

The day’s most unfortunate victim was BMC’s Richie Porte, who crashed dramatically on the descent of the Mont du Chat, ending his Tour de France. Porte looked to be riding himself into the top-3 at the time, but misjudged a corner on the technical downhill. Quick-Step’s Dan Martin was involved in the crash as well, and while he was able to get back on his bike, he lost 1:15 and fell to 6th-place overall.

RELATED: A Preview of Stage 10

So with two weeks left to race, the 2017 Tour de France is far from over. But on a day in which he displayed no signs of weakness, it might be Froome’s to lose.

Stage 8 - Chris Froome

Team Sky’s Chris Froome survived the first of two days in the Jura mountains to hold onto the yellow jersey as the leader of the 2017 Tour de France . A breakaway finally succeeded, with 24-year-old Frenchman Lilian Calmejane taking the win for Direct Energie, but Froome finished safely in the bunch 50 seconds behind him. He still leads the Tour by 12 seconds over his teammate, Geraint Thomas, and by 14 seconds over Astana’s Fabio Aru.

RELATED: How Geraint Thomas Stormed to an Early Tour Lead

Froome is still in the driver’s seat, but his team used a lot of energy to keep its captain safe during a difficult Stage 8. Stage 9 is even harder with seven categorized climbs including three Hors Categorie or “Beyond Category” summits. Froome’s closest challengers were happy to let the Team Sky keep the race, but with such a mountainous stage on tap for Sunday, they won’t be content to just ride the Briton’s wheel. If Froome’s lead in the 2017 Tour de France is vulnerable, Stage 9 will let us know.

Stage 7 - Chris Froome

Another field sprint means another day in the yellow jersey for Chris Froome, who still leads the 2017 Tour de France. The Team Sky rider finished safely in the peloton at the end of Stage 7, which earned him the same finishing time as the day’s winner, Germany’s Marcel Kittel.

RELATED: Check Out Chris Froome's Pinarello Dogma F10

With no changes to the top of the Tour's General Classification, Froome still leads the Tour by 12 seconds over his teammate, Geraint Thomas, and 14 seconds over Astana’s Fabio Aru. But the Tour heads back to the mountains this weekend with two tough stages in the Jura. Froome’s still the favorite to win the Tour overall, but he and his team will have their hands full Saturday and Sunday.

Stage 6 - Chris Froome

Team Sky’s Chris Froome is still wearing the yellow jersey as the leader of the 2017 Tour de France . Froome finished safely in the peloton on Stage 6, which was won by Quick-Step’s Marcel Kittel.

Froome leads the Tour by 12 seconds over his teammate, Geraint Thomas, and by 14 seconds over Astana’s Fabio Aru, the Italian national champion who won the Tour’s first summit finish on Stage 5. With another flat stage on tap for Stage 6, don’t expect any changes until the Tour hits the mountains this weekend.

Stage 3 - Geraint Thomas (with Froome Closing in)

After three stages, Team Sky’s Geraint Thomas is still wearing the yellow jersey as the overall leader of the 2017 Tour de France . Thomas finished eighth in Stage 3, only two seconds behind the winner, Peter Sagan. As a result, he’ll keep the maillot jaune for another day.

Team Sky’s Chris Froome moved up the Tour’s General Classification, thanks to his ninth-place finish today. He’s now second overall, just 12 seconds behind Thomas, his teammate. Stage 4 is expected to end in a field sprint, meaning we shouldn’t see many changes in the overall standings Tuesday. But Wednesday’s Stage 5 finishes atop the la Planche des Belles Filles, a Category 1 climb that will certainly shake things up.

RELATED: Odds and Race Predictions for This Year's Tour

Stage 2 - Team Sky, With Sagan Looking Strong

By finishing safely inside the main peloton on Stage 2 of the Tour , Team Sky’s Geraint Thomas successfully defended his yellow jersey. That said, Quick-Step’s Marcel Kittel picked up 10 bonus seconds by winning Sunday’s stage in Liège, and now sits just 6 seconds behind Thomas. Tomorrow’s uphill finish in Longwy doesn’t suit the big German, though, so his chances of earning more bonus seconds and possibly the yellow jersey are slim. A better bet to win the stage and possibly take over the lead in the Tour’s General Classification is Bora-Hansgrohe’s Peter Sagan . The world champion sits only 25-seconds behind Thomas and took the yellow jersey early in last year’s Tour by winning a stage with a similar finish. Quick-Step’s Philippe Gilbert is only 1 second behind Sagan and could pull it off as well.

Unless it’s later revealed that his crash had a bigger impact than it appears, there’s still little reason to doubt that Team Sky has the inside track to win its fifth Tour de France. Thomas, Chris Froome , and the rest of the team are clearly in top form. That said, as we’ve seen in the last two days, crashes happen. Even the best riders need a little luck to win the Tour de France—especially during the first week when the peloton is large and the riders are nervous.

RELATED: Froome Says He's Entering 2017 Tour "Fresher" Than Ever

Stage 1 - Geraint Thomas and Team Sky

Team Sky’s Geraint Thomas won Stage 1 of the 2017 Tour de France , on only his fifth day of racing since crashing-out of May’s Giro d’Italia. Thomas stormed the rainy 14km individual time trial 5 seconds faster than pre-race favorite Stefan Küng of BMC, and seven seconds faster than his teammate, Vassil Kiryienka. Germany’s Tony Martin, the reigning world time trial champion, finished fifth. Thomas has been one of Chris Froome’s most important teammates during Froome’s three Tour victories. Today, his dedication was rewarded with a stage win and the Tour’s first yellow jersey.

With four riders in the top-10, Team Sky clearly sent a message to those who doubted the team’s collective strength—especially BMC’s Richie Porte . In a pre-race interview, the Australian said he thought that Sky’s team was weaker than in past years, a comment that clearly seems have “poked the bear.” Clearly, Froome and his team are ready for another dominating Tour de France performance, with Froome himself putting more than 30 seconds into Porte, Movistar’s Nairo Quintana, and Trek-Segafredo’s Alberto Contador. We’re only one day into the race, but it’s already looking as if the 2017 Tour de France is Team Sky’s for the taking—again.

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Team Sky lead the peloton on stage 12 of the 2017 Tour de France (Sunada)

Chris Froome

Stage wins: 7

Total appearances: 6

Yellow jersey winning appearances: 5

Every year since 2013 Team Sky has assembled a formidable line-up to support Chris Froome at the Tour, and each time (with the sole exception of 2014) Froome has capitalised from their hard work to deliver the team overall victory.

He might have cut a frustrated figure on his first Tour for the team back in 2012, but resisted the urge to attack a potentially weaker Bradley Wiggins, and has since become the team’s undisputed outright leader and easily their most successful rider, with four yellow jerseys to his name.

It is testament to his leadership qualities that he inspires such loyalty and devotion from his team-mates each year, and to his mental fortitude that he is able to return each year at the same level.

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Bradley Wiggins

Stage wins: 2

Total appearances: 3

Yellow jersey winning appearances: 1

However many more editions Chris Froome goes on to win, Wiggins will always be the first British and first Sky rider to win the Tour de France .

He was the man Dave Brailsford had in mind when he declared the team’s goal (that seemed bold at the time, but turned out to be an understatement) of winning the Tour de France with a British rider within five years.

Despite misfiring as leader in the team’s first two Tour appearances, everything clicked into place for 2012, when Sky first perfected the data-focussed strangulation tactics they have since made their trademark, and through which Wiggins and his team-mates trounced the opposition.

Richie Porte

Stage wins: 0

Total appearances: 4

Yellow jersey winning appearances: 3

During his four years at Sky, Richie Porte was the best wingman Chris Froome could hope for.

It’s conceivable that Froome would not have won both the 2013 and 2015 editions were it not for his Australian lieutenant - in both races Porte dropped the entire field on the first mountain top finish to put his leader firmly in control of the race, and also on both occasions came to Froome’s rescue on Alpe d’Huez when he suffered a hunger knock (in 2013) and was dropped by Nairo Quintana (in 2015).

Porte’s only major disappointment was his failure to step up as an alternative leader following Froome’s abandonment in the 2014 edition, but his role in Wiggins’ 2012 team means he left Sky having helped win the yellow jersey three times.

Geraint Thomas

Stage wins: 1

Total appearances: 7

Yellow jersey winning appearances: 4

Having featured in all but one of Sky’s eight Tour appearances, and in every one of Froome’s winning rides, Thomas is the team’s most dependable and constant domestique.

Or should that be super-domestique? After starting out as a man to mostly provide protection on the flat stages, the Welshman blossomed into a superb climber at the 2015 Tour, making him an invaluable asset capable of offering assistance on every type of terrain.

He has since continued to evolve, to the point where he goes into this year’s Tour with the enhanced status as co-leader alongside Froome.

Total appearances: 2

Yellow jersey winning appearances: 2

A quality climber who has emerged as Froome’s leading domestique in the mountains since joining the team in 2015, Poels epitomises the selflessness that has brought Team Sky so much success.

The gangly Dutchman was part of the yellow jersey-winning squads of that year and 2016, and, although fitness denied him the chance of a hat-trick last year, he’s guaranteed a start his year having spent the last 12 months guiding Froome to overall victories at the Vuelta a España and the Giro d'Italia .

Standing at 6’1”, Poels is one of the few riders who covers all of Froome’s tall frame when riding at the front of the peloton - which he has done regularly, especially during the crunch time of the Tour’s final week.

Mikel Landa

Sky have always backed their leaders with plenty of supporting climbing talent, but at last year’s race Mikel Landa provided something different by maintaining a high place on the GC for himself.

That enabled him to function as a dangerous decoy for rival teams to worry about and chase - as during the intense 101km stage to Foix, where he helped wear out Sky’s rivals by forming part of a threatening breakaway at the start of the stage.

Speculative fears of a mutiny proved totally unfounded as the Spaniard continued to work selflessly in the service of Froome, while also ultimately finishing fourth overall, the first time Sky placed two riders in the top-10 - let alone the top five - since Wiggins and Froome’s one-two in 2012.

Mikel Nieve

Is there a more consistent climber in world cycling than Mikel Nieve? The Spaniard has completed all 15 Grand Tours he has attempted throughout the duration of his career, never finishing lower than 25th, and never higher than 8th.

Between 2014-2017, Nieve brought that metronomic dependability to Team Sky, playing a key role in Froome’s 2016 and 2017 victories. Seldom was he the last man standing in the Sky train, but he always fulfilled his duties to perfection in the less acknowledged role of setting the pace early on climbs before the big attacks were made.

Edvald Boasson Hagen

A star of the team’s early years, Edvald Boasson Hagen was the team’s most successful rider at the Tour before it evolved to become the yellow jersey-winning machine we recognise today.

He featured in the bunch sprints during his debut ride in 2010, and went on to claim the team’s first ever Tour stage victory the following year in an uphill sprint finish on a rainy day in Normandy, before using some exemplary descending skills in the Alps to add another two weeks later.

Proving his worth as a team player, Boasson Hagen adapted to become an early pace-setter on the next two editions, helping Wiggins to win in 2012 and Froome in 2013.

Vasil Kiryienka

The unsung heroes of the Tour are the riders who do the unglamorous work not always caught on camera, like ride at the front of the peloton before TV coverage begins, or carry bidons up to the rest of the team.

In this regard, special mentions must go to Luke Rowe and Ian Stannard, who have both worked tirelessly throughout their three appearances each at the Tour, but it’s Belarusian hardman Vasil Kiryienka who has most excelled in the role over the years.

In his four Tour appearances for the team (only Froome and Thomas can boast more), Kiryienka has regularly astonished with his robotic ability to ride kilometre after kilometre at the front without ever compromising his perfectly still upper-body position, and can do an equally good job on steady climbs as he can on the flat.

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Stephen Puddicombe is a freelance journalist for Cycling Weekly , who regularly contributes to our World Tour racing coverage with race reports, news stories, interviews and features. Outside of cycling, he also enjoys writing about film and TV - but you won't find much of that content embedded into his CW articles. 

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Team Sky Is Now a Double Threat in Tour de France

The day after losing the Tour de France lead to Fabio Aru, Chris Froome and his Team Sky showed Friday that they still had cards up their sleeves.

On the shortest stage of the 104th Tour, other than the two time trials, Sky brought Mikel Landa into play — sending Froome’s Spanish teammate racing off ahead on a fast and furious Stage 13 that became part chess and part a test of speed and endurance over a close-packed succession of three climbs in the Pyrenees.

End result: Sky has two riders — Froome and Landa — in the top five. Until the July 23 finish in Paris, Aru will have to watch both and not let either race off ahead of him if he wants to keep the yellow jersey.

“It’s perfect for us,” Froome said.

At just 63 miles, less than half the distance of some of this Tour’s longest stages, the up-down, up-down, up-down route through the Ariege region of mountain cheeses and peak-perched fortresses delivered exactly what Tour organizers were hoping for: full-on racing. The Frenchman Warren Barguil won the stage on Bastille Day — the first French victory on the national holiday since David Moncoutie in 2005.

By finishing fourth in the leading pack that sped in nearly two minutes ahead of a chasing group that included the Tour’s top four riders over all — Aru, Froome, the French rider Romain Bardet and the Colombian Rigoberto Uran — Landa clawed back valuable time in the overall standings. From seventh at the start of the stage, Landa is fifth, just 1 minute 9 seconds behind Aru.

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“Today marks a culture change for our organization where we re-establish the pride, work ethic and responsibility that comes with playing for the Knicks and representing New York,” the team’s owner, James L. Dolan, said in statement. “I’m confident that Steve is the right person to take on this role, and ensure that we return to one of the elite teams of the N.B.A.”

Mills returns to the role he held briefly before Jackson was hired in March 2014 and Mills was made general manager. Perry was the executive vice president of operations for the Sacramento Kings and previously held front-office roles for other organizations.

LIBERTY LOSE TO THE SKY Stefanie Dolson scored 23 points and Chicago beat the Liberty, 78-68, for the visiting Sky’s third consecutive win. Chicago (6-12) was up, 53-52, heading into the final quarter before scoring 14 of the first 17 points in the period. Tina Charles had 21 points and 19 rebounds for the Liberty (8-9).

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João Medeiros

The science behind Chris Froome and Team Sky's Tour de France preparations

When Chris Froome is racing, he imagines he has a bag of coins to spend. Every time he wastes energy, he needs to pay. He pays whenever he's pedalling against the wind. He pays when he moves up the peloton during a climb instead of waiting for a flat road where he can get maximum drag off the riders around him. He even pays for trivial manoeuvres such as collecting bidons of water from the support car that follows riders during a race. He pays because all these moments imply an acceleration, an intensification of effort that puts Froome in the red.

In physiological terms, the moment that requires payment is called the threshold: the point beyond which you cannot ride comfortably for a long period of time. At any given stage of a race, Froome will try to spend as little time over that threshold as possible, even if that means losing his position within the group. Froome is attuned to it. As he crosses that threshold, he starts feeling his body screaming at him to slow down. He starts breathing faster as his muscles demand more oxygen.

Then comes the pain. When it comes, he embraces it, knowing that it's highly likely that his rivals are in even more discomfort. He might look around the peloton checking for symptoms in the riders' body language. Alberto Contador, the Spaniard from team Tinkoff and winner of all three Grand Tours - Tour de France, Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a España - hides it well, grimacing for just a second. Nairo Quintana, from Colombia, sits very still on the bike, his face expressionless.

Froome, on the other hand, is perhaps the most obvious in his suffering. Elbows out, head down, ungraceful. But pain is sometimes a signal for Froome to make his move, especially if he has made his savings, carefully 
considering the energy that went into every single pedal stroke. He knows that when it comes to the final climb at a key stage of a Grand Tour, the rider with the most coins left is the one most likely to win.

That's what happened during stage ten of the 2015 Tour de France . It was the first mountain of the Tour, a hilly 166km stretch of road between Tarbes and La Pierre-Saint-Martin in the Pyrenees that finished at an elevation of 1,610m after 15.3km of climbing. Froome, who weighed 67.5kg at the time, averaged a power of 414 Watts during that climb. With 6.5km to go, he accelerated for 24 seconds, averaging 556 Watts. It was a devastating attack that left Quintana, his nearest opponent, for dust, and a performance so spectacular that journalists questioned its provenance.

In the subsequent press conference, Tim Kerrison, Froome's coach, told reporters that it was not unexpected considering some of the numbers the rider had achieved in the past. For instance, Froome's average power over 60 minutes, including the run-in to the climb, was 366 Watts, and Kerrison pointed out that Froome had exceeded that level on 15 occasions since 2011, in racing and training. Furthermore, his heart rate readings indicated that he had reached the stage feeling fresh and in good physical condition. In other words, he had saved most of his coins. "It's great when you manage to save as much as possible and you're ready for the last climb," Froome says.

Louryn Strampe

Reece Rogers

Nena Farrell

Terrence O'Brien

"You know you're going to lay it all out there and just go for it." Of course, Froome's extraordinary performance wasn't just a direct result of his natural ability, but a by-product of his training. Kerrison was able to cite exactly how many times Froome had exceeded the power output number that he registered at Pierre-Saint-Martin; after all, he's been tracking data from every single pedal stroke his riders take, both in racing and training, for more than four years. That data is the foundation for the comprehensive and detailed training programme that all Team Sky riders undertake. "I work on the basis that everything we do is probably wrong," Kerrison says. "There are sure to be better ways of doing things. Pretty much every day we do things differently. The riders understand why we do things the way we do. They can always see how it relates to the overall picture."

Chris Froome, 31, has blue eyes and close-cropped hair. His body shape is ectomorphic, with long, lean limbs. His demeanour is quiet but polite and inclusive. When we sit down to talk in the living room at Team Sky's house in Nice, he asks for permission before reclining on the sofa. He either looks straight at the ceiling or across his shoulder directly at WIRED when making a particularly salient point, such as the moment he began to have confidence in himself as a rider and started being smarter about his racing style. He used to be careless with his energy. He was impulsive. Or sometimes team tactics dictated he had to attack at the beginning of the stage and, by the time the race reached the key moment of a climb, he would have nothing left to give.

It's not that Froome lacked the natural capacity; he always knew he had, as he puts it, a "big engine". He just didn't know how to use it. When he was tested in a physiology laboratory in July 2007, in Lausanne, Switzerland, he was told that the maximum rate at which he could consume oxygen - a physiological parameter that goes by the name of VO2max - was 80.2ml of oxygen per minute per kilo of body weight, and his threshold power sat at a 420W. These were the numbers of a potential Tour de France champion.

When Froome joined Team Sky in 2010 from Barloworld, he would produce incredible numbers in training, frequently much higher than his teammates, even though unbeknown to him at the time his body was ridden with parasitic flatworms (a disease called bilharzia, for which he was eventually treated). And yet, he was inconsistent when competing. By the 2011 season, Team Sky's performance director Dave Brailsford was considering dropping him from the squad. His standing in the team was such that the pre-race plan for the 2011 Vuelta a España said: "[Teammates] Xabier [Zandio], Morris [Possoni] and Froome will do their best to survive as long as possible and will fetch bottles, etc." He finished that Vuelta in second place, ahead of Bradley Wiggins, Team Sky's leading rider at the time. That, he says, was the big turning point in his cycling career. A year later, when Wiggins won the Tour de France, Froome finished second.

"I began to understand that I belonged with the best climbers," Froome says. "I wasn't struggling the way I thought I would be." He gained confidence and learned how to use his internal engine. When he repeated the physiological test in August 2015, his values hadn't shifted much - VO2max was now 84.6 and his threshold power 419W - the difference was due to his weight 
loss of 5.7kg. These were the numbers of a two-time Tour de France winner.

In 2009, when Dave Brailsford announced the creation of Team Sky, Britain's only professional race cycling team, the goal was to win the Tour de France within five years - a bold target considering that Britain never had much tradition in road cycling.

Winning the Tour de France had been a dream Brailsford had harboured since he was a teenager. He was brought up in a mining village in North Wales, and in 1983, aged 19, he decided to try competing in the Tour de France. He stuck his bike inside a cardboard box and bought a one-way ticket to France. "I grant you, I was a bit naive and didn't really appreciate the magnitude of the challenge," Brailsford says. "I went to the end of a bike race, when everybody arrived with their cars. I looked around for the nicest kits, went up to them with my bike in its box and said,
"Hi, can I race for your team?" And they were all like, "What?"

Brailsford ended up spending four years in Saint-Étienne, failing to race at the Tour de France, failing even to become a professional. He eventually returned to the UK and completed a degree in sports psychology followed by an MBA at the University of Sheffield Management School.

In 1997, he was hired by British Cycling as an operations director to look over its business side. The programme was run by Peter Keen, a respected sport scientist known for his innovative approach to coaching. As performance director, Keen was taking steps to modernise an underfunded, understaffed team with no infrastructure for proper training. In 1998, after the announcement of Lottery funding for sports in the UK, Keen put together an ambitious and detailed plan entitled the World Class Performance Programme. He stated his vision clearly: to make the UK the world's top cycling nation by 2012. Few people believed it was possible.

At the core of his plan was the application of a scientific and rational method to the art of cycling performance. It was a clear break from a past dominated by a mindset rooted in tradition, low self-belief and an unwillingness to explore new technology. British Cycling hired performance analysts, physiologists and biomechanists. "We had a lack of history in terms of cycling. There were no 
professional cycling coaches, so we hired smart sport-science graduates, "Brailsford says. "You might say that with hindsight that was a great decision. We were lucky to have this group who came up with all kinds of weird and wonderful ideas. Nobody ever said that something 
was not going to work."

Perhaps the most significant step early on was the acquisition of a set of power meters for the bikes, which allowed the measurement of the energy per second the cyclists could produce: their power output, in other words. Whereas before, cyclists had to rely on monitoring heart rate, speed and perceived exertion - all parameters that were easily influenced by environmental factors and had nothing to do with performance - power output was an objective measure and was the perfect tool for performance-based training. It allowed track cycling to become a data-driven sport.

The power meters, along with other technologies like video analysis and aerodynamic testing, allowed British Cycling performance analysts to create a systematic analysis of the numbers - lap times, cadences, power outputs, drag factors - that their riders could produce. They would also do an in-depth analysis of the numbers that were needed to win races, a process they called analysis of the demands of the event. "We would go to the nth degree in terms of truly understanding what winning looked like," Brailsford says. "This allowed us to create a document called 'What It'll Take to Win'. We spent more time than any other team in the world doing that particular work."

By the time Keen left in 2003, Brailsford had inherited a British Cycling team that had already accrued significant success in the Olympics. Alongside its emphasis on sport science, Brailsford introduced an organisational principle called "Performance by the aggregation of marginal gains". As a philosophy, it was akin to a widely known business concept known as Kaizen, popularised by Toyota, which requires the implementation of a culture of continuous improvement. In fact, the name "marginal" came to Brailsford as he was reviewing some studies he had done during his MBA on marginal costing. In cycling terms, it meant breaking down everything that goes into riding a bike and looking for the one per cent shifts that would make a difference. It seemed obvious to Brailsford that going after big ideas was difficult to do on a daily basis, but small gains, which were often overlooked, could be regularly aggregated to create meaningful change.

"Marginal gains came out of the magnitude of change required, in terms of where we were and where we wanted to get to," Brailsford says. "And then, equally, I know this sounds a bit contradictory, the margins of victory. You could win a race by one-tenth of a second. And you're thinking, 'OK, if we could win a race by one-tenth of a second, all these little things over here could equate to one-tenth of a second. So, why won't we do them?'"

After the Beijing Games in 2008, with Brailsford still at the helm, British Cycling had become one of the most extraordinary success stories in the history of sport. Atlanta 1996: two medals, 12th place; Sydney 2000, four medals; Athens 2004, four medals and third place; Beijing 2008: 14 medals and first place. This was the sort of epic British success story that Brailsford wanted to replicate 
in road cycling with Team Sky.

"When we created Team Sky, we sat down with a blank sheet of paper and said: "Right, we're going to create a professional cycling team. How should we do it?'" Brailsford recalls. "We took what we'd learned and tried and tested over the years in British Cycling 
and put it all on the page."

During its first year of operation, Team Sky became well known for its relentless application of marginal gains, in stark contrast with the traditional professional teams at the time. Team Sky's jerseys were designed with a thin blue line that ran down the spine to symbolise the narrow margin between victory and defeat, made from a special black fabric that reflected heat. It hired Honda's Formula 1 logistics manager Gwilym Mason-Evans to gut the inside of the team bus and completely redesign it. It employed a team of carers who would go to the hotels where the riders would be staying to remove mattresses, vacuum the beds underneath and replace them with mattresses and pillows made of elastic foam that had been individually customised so that the riders could maintain the same posture every night. It taught its riders how to wash their hands properly, made them carry hand gels at all times and forbade handshakes to prevent the spreading of illnesses during competition. It had bike-fitting sessions using 3D motion-capture technology in Valencia, Spain. It ordered the manufacture of a Perspex cocoon in which the team could warm up away from crowds and the media.

The sporting results, however, were disappointing. Bradley Wiggins had finished fourth at the previous Tour de France riding for Garmin-Slipstream. Now Team Sky's main contender, he finished the next in 24th place. "We'd come into the sport thinking that we knew a lot, we'd won all these Olympic medals and it was going to be easy," admits Fran Millar, Team Sky's director of business operations and head of winning behaviours. "Bradley was having ice baths and drinking cherry juice and all sorts of stuff, but he just wasn't fit enough. Dave said that we had concentrated too much on the peas, and not on the steak."

Prior to the start of the 2010 season, Brailsford hired Australian performance analyst Tim Kerrison. He was a former rower with extensive experience of coaching and as a sport scientist for swimming. He had been exclusively involved in swimming since 1998, working with a group of female sprinters who went on to have a very successful 2004 Olympics in Athens. "There was this ingrained culture of swimming which was very conducive to developing good aerobic distance-based, endurance-based athletes, but not sprinters," Kerrison says. "We recognised if we do what we've always done, we'll get what we've always got. That needed to change. Let's forget everything we know about swimming and the way everyone trains and think from first principles. What do we know not just about swimming, but other sports and physiology and training science?"

Most training programmes at the time were based around the idea of periodisation. "It's essentially the way the emphasis of training shifts over time," Kerrison says. "This can include a greater emphasis on workload or recovery, or a shift in the emphasis of the type of training within a training block." Traditionally, periodisation involved an initial training period which was predominantly focused 
on endurance and aerobic capacity, with more intense anaerobic workouts that included speed and power training added later in the year as a competition approached.

"We turned the conventional periodisation idea around," Kerrison says. "It made more sense. One of the foundations of sports training is specificity, which means that everything you do in training has to be related, to some degree, to what you need to do in competition. So we began working on the team's anaerobic systems from the very beginning, developing their strength, speed and power. Only later did we lay on more aerobic training."

Kerrison had been working as a sports scientist for the British swimming team since 2005 when Brailsford contacted him. He had already received a job offer from England Cricket that he was about to sign, and although Kerrison had never worked with cyclists, Brailsford convinced him to join Team Sky. "I grew up thinking that the Tour was one of the ultimate sporting challenges," Kerrison says. "I still think it is. I can't think of many things more challenging and special to me than winning the Tour de France. So it's a meaningful goal. How realistic it was, I wasn't sure."

When Kerrison joined Team Sky in late 2009, Brailsford told him that they were not expecting anything from him until November 2010. His mission was just to follow the team around as they competed for their first Tour de France. They hired a camper van, nicknamed Black Betty, which Kerrison shared with fellow performance analyst Matt Parker, then Team Sky's head of marginal gains. Kerrison spent this time taking notes and talking little. "He travelled round with the team working with our power data and not really visibly much else. Everyone was just, 'Who is this weird Australian who lives in a camper van?" Fran Millar recalls.

At the end of 2010, after the first season of racing, Brailsford told Kerrison, who had been in cycling for about a year, that he was going to coach Bradley Wiggins and that he had to formulate a plan to win the Tour de France. "I did what I had done with the sprint swimmers in Australia: go back to the very first principles," Kerrison says. "It was a huge benefit to not have my judgment clouded by all the other stuff I didn't know and just quickly work out exactly what I needed to know. We needed to forget about the culture, and forget about all the bullshit and the peripherals."

One of the first things Kerrison did was to try and find out exactly what it would take to win the Tour. After all, much of the success of British Cycling had been built around a methodical analysis of an event's demands and knowing what it took to win. "Riders used power and trained for power to a certain extent," Brailsford says. "They would download their training information into the system and get nothing back, so they stopped doing it. Kerrison changed all that. Our compliance rates, in terms of riders, when they're at home downloading the data, went through the roof, because they all started seeing how it affected their training plans."

Kerrison adopted a database system called Training Peaks in which the athletes could download the data so that he could study it. Using this data, Kerrison did a power curve analysis for each athlete that showed, for a given duration - from one second to three hours - how much power a rider could sustain. ("It's an ongoing thing now," Kerrison says. "Every day we have a new current power curve for the riders. Over time we have built up a knowledge of what this means and how to interpret it.") Then, based on the data available for previous Tour de France winners and on extrapolations, he estimated the power curve corresponding to what it would take to win the Tour de France. "Those were the demands of the event," Brailsford says. "We compared the capacity athletes had against what was needed to win and trained the athletes against that."

Kerrison also understood that Team Sky would need good climbers that could perform at altitude and at high temperatures. "A lot of decisive moments in the Grand Tours are performed at well over 1,000 
metres, sometimes as high as 2,500 metres," Kerrison says. "So if you're not able to perform at that level, then you're screwed, basically."

The body adapts to training at altitude, mostly through respiratory adaptations, recalibrating to different levels of oxygen. To address this, Kerrison scouted Europe for high-altitude camp locations, eventually deciding on Tenerife. "Britain doesn't have high mountains and heat so our cyclists weren't used to it," Kerrison says. "I did start to question if we were going to be able to compete with guys who spent their whole lives growing up riding in the mountains at altitude in the heat."

Still, Kerrison wondered how quickly the athletes would be able to adapt, so at the start of their first Tenerife camp, they tested their athletes' efforts at altitude and at sea level. On day one, the average difference in the athletes' threshold between sea level and 2,100 metres was about 70W. By day three, it was 35W. After two weeks there was no difference. The riders had acclimatised.

When Kerrison presented his plan to win the Tour de France, he essentially said that they had to forget about the details until they got the basics right. For Wiggins, those basics were conditioning, weight management, time trialling and performing at altitude and in the heat. "We were so caught up with the bells and whistles and all the clever stuff," Brailsford says. "We delivered all of that in year one and it didn't work. We didn't get our basics right. That was a big learning and Kerrison was a bit part of that. We decided on a new mantra that winter: 'Doing the simple things better than anybody else.'" That year, Bradley Wiggins crashed out on an early stage of the Tour, breaking his collarbone. In 2012, however, he became the first British rider to win it.

One afternoon in April 2016, Kerrison is at the wheel of one of Team Sky's Ford Mondeos following Froome as he pedals a few metres ahead in the hills around Nice, in the south of France. He had already completed most of this training plan for the day: two flat efforts on the time trial bike - 15 minutes and 12 minutes - with about five minutes of recovery in between. Then he took part in a 20-minute climbing effort on the time trial bike before switching to a road bike and was now on his final effort: 12 minutes of "spiked efforts" building up to four minutes of threshold. "Froome's anaerobic threshold is on around 450 Watts, but he rarely does anything at a constant pace," Kerrison explains. 
"He might do one minute about 30 Watts over threshold and then three minutes with ten Watts under threshold. Overall, the effort over that period of time would be at threshold."

This goes back to Kerrison's idea of specificity. While sometimes the pace is constant at a race, other times it is very dynamic, with pace changing all the time. That's what Froome is training for. Of course, on a more fundamental level, what Kerrison is manipulating in his mind is a more complicated set of equations describing the various cause-effect relationships between a training load and a physiological adaptation.

Consider the interplay between the distinct aerobic and anaerobic motors of an athlete. In simple terms, below the physiological landmark of the lactate threshold, the body is able to clear lactate as fast as it is produced. Above that threshold, it accumulates.

"People think developing the anaerobic system is a bad thing because it produces lactate and lactate is bad," Kerrison says. "It's only bad if you can't remove it. Otherwise, it gives you power. When I was in Australia we had some distance swimmers who, no matter how hard we pushed them, just didn't produce any lactate. I'm not sure whether that was because they weren't producing any or because they were efficient at removing it. We found out when we first measured Chris that it was the same. He would do a maximum effort and when we measured lactate there was nothing. Based on what I knew from swimming, I knew this was really promising. He was producing incredible power and whatever lactate he was producing he was able to remove. That indicated that we needed to increase his anaerobic capacity - his ability to produce lactate - because he had an ability to remove it."

Kerrison then adds another layer to the consideration of Froome's physiology: the nutritional fuel he uses for this aerobic effort. This fuel is a mixture of carbohydrates and fats, which are metabolised in different proportions depending on the intensity of the effort. The more intense the effort, the more carbs are required. But to Kerrison, even the way the body fuels can be trained and adapted, shifting it towards a type of metabolism that specifically benefits a rider racing the Tour de France.

"We restrict carbs in training and this shifts the metabolism," Kerrison says. "It drives an adaptation that makes the body become more efficient at using fat as fuel. So up to a certain intensity, say 200 Watts, Froome will predominantly be using fat as fuel. A significant portion of a typical five-hour stage is ridden at a relatively low intensity, meaning he'll be burning mostly fat, saving the carb stores for the more intense stages of the stage where it's needed the most - for example, the final mountain climb."

According to Kerrison, the interaction between those three types of metabolisms - carbohydrate-fuelled aerobix, fat-fuelled aerobic and anaerobic - is the foundation of Froome's training plan. When we return to Team Sky's house, Kerrison shows WIRED a five-page checklist that he keeps for each of his riders. It includes items such as power curve analysis, demands of the events, fat-carb metabolism, heat and altitude. There are 74 factors, qualitative and quantitative, that encapsulate Kerrison's understanding of what it takes to win.

It's the blueprint of what it takes to become a Tour de France winner, a title that Froome is defending this year after victory in 2015. He won it pretty much the same way as he had in 2013: by riding the first mountain stage very aggressively and earning a substantial advantage early in the race. That strategy caught everyone off guard. It wasn't part of Team Sky's plans; it was a decision that Froome made a couple of weeks before the start of the Tour and even Kerrison wasn't sure it was the best way to race.

Indeed, by the penultimate stage, Froome was struggling physically, exacerbated by a chest infection. Quintana, second in the general classification and 3'10" behind the leader, attacked relentlessly. "It was one of the days I had to fight the hardest to keep the yellow jersey," Froome recalls. "The pain was severe, but I knew that once I got to the finish line it would be done."

This article was originally published by WIRED UK

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Tour Tech 2017: How Team Sky’s bikes have changed over the past 5 years

Five years is a long time in bike racing. Back in 2012 Team Sky won the Tour de France for the first time and Chris Froome is looking good to repeat the feat in 2017. We thought it would be interesting to compare the team’s bikes from five years ago to those raced today.

In case you’ve forgotten, 2012 was the year that Bradley Wiggins (above) won the Tour de France, the first Briton ever to do so, aided and abetted by a certain Chris Froome who finished second overall. Wiggins won both individual time trials and Froome won Stage 7 to La Planche des Belles Filles. 

Mark Cavendish was on Team Sky that season and won three stages in the Tour de France, including the final stage finishing on the Champs-Élysées. It was a big, big year for the team.

Team Sky were riding Pinarello Dogma 2s in 2012 (this is Cav's bike, above, and Wiggins' Dogma 2 below) with Wiggins racing the final stage on the Dogma 65.1, new at the time, made from stiffer type of carbon fibre.

Have a look at Team Sky's 2012 Tour de France bikes here.

The Dogma 2 was Pinarello’s top line road machine with a frame made from Toray’s 60HM1K carbon. 

The Onda fork was made from the same material, coming with a tapered 1 1/8in to 1 1/2in steerer for a little extra stiffness compared to a standard straight steerer.

Team Sky are, of course, still using the Dogma but now it’s the F10 (this is Chris Froome's bike, above), Pinarello having been through the 65.1 and the F8 versions since 2012. It’s recognisably related to the Dogma 2 although the wavy chainstays, seatstays and fork legs (below), said to have improved the ride damping for increased comfort, have been toned down considerably. There’s still a bit of wiggliness (it’s a technical term!) going on there but today’s Dogma isn’t as far out there as a love it or hate it design.

Check out Chris Froome’s Pinarello Dogma F10 here. 

Pinarello has stuck with an Italian threaded bottom bracket too (this is Wiggins' Dogma 2, above), whereas every other brand ridden in the pro peloton uses a pressed in BB these days. 

Many other frame features have been altered, though. The pro cycling world is now even more obsessed by aerodynamics than it was five years ago and you can easily identify features of the Dogma F10 designed to reduce drag. All of the frame tubes are slim and deep in profile, as are the fork legs and the seatpost, and the seatstays meet the seat tube quite low (above) to reduce the size of the frontal area and to manage airflow around the rear wheel. 

Check out our review of the Pinarello Dogma F8, the version that came before the current F10. 

Pinarello claims that the aerodynamic drag of the F10 has been reduced by up to 20% from that of the previous generation F8 (largely thanks to a new down tube, above, borrowed from the Bolide time trial bike, that’s designed to shield the water bottles from the airflow) never mind compared to the Dogma 2. 

As is usually the case, Pinarello says that it has made progress in terms of stiffness and lightness too. The F10 has a claimed weight of 820g for a raw 53cm model while the Dogma 2 was a comparatively portly 920g for a 54cm size. However, the complete bike must still weigh at least 6.8kg to meet the UCI's regulations.

Pinarello made the stays and down tube of the Dogma 2 asymmetric (the Dogma has been asymmetric since 2009) to take account of the higher forces on the driveside of the frame compared to the non-driveside. 

The Dogma F10 is still asymmetric, the down tube having been shifted 2mm towards the right compared to the F8 in order to provide extra stiffness on that side. 

Find out more about the Pinarello Dogma F10 here. 

Dura-Ace is now 11-speed whereas it was still 10-speed in 2012 and Di2 is far more customisable. The junction box is now hidden away in a compartment in the Dogma F10’s down tube (above) rather than out in the airflow.

The crank arms, still aluminium, are also chunkier and asymmetric now, the idea being to add stiffness. This is Chris Froome's chainset, above, fitted with Osymetric non-round chainrings. Wiggins was also using Osymetric chainrings in 2012.

Shimano’s new wheels have also increased in width from 24mm to 28mm to work better with the wider tyres that most riders are using these days. Shimano claims that C60s are considerably more efficient than C50s in what it calls 'real world' conditions.

Sky’s 2012 bikes were fitted with SRM power meters (this is Wiggins' chainset, above) but the team has been using Stages crank-based power meters since 2014. 

Team Sky race on saddles from Fizik in 2017, as they did in 2012. This is Chris Froome's Antares (above).

The Italian brand has changed the way its range is structured but some team riders still use carbon railed Ariones like Mark Cavendish's (above).

Overall, Team Sky's 2017 bikes have a lot in common with those of 2012, as you'd probably expect, but a lot has changed too, mostly because of manufacturers looking to reduce drag. With the importance of aerodynamic efficiency and the UCI unlikely to alter its 6.8kg minimum weight limit for bikes any time soon, you can expect brands to carry on focusing on this area into the future.

Will we ever see Team Sky racing on the disc version of the Pinarello F10 that was announced yesterday ? We'll just have to wait to see how things develop in the pro peloton, but certainly not in this year's Tour de France.

Click here for more Tour de France tech stories.

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Mat has been in cycling media since 1996, on titles including BikeRadar, Total Bike, Total Mountain Bike, What Mountain Bike and Mountain Biking UK, and he has been editor of 220 Triathlon and Cycling Plus. Mat has been road.cc technical editor for over a decade, testing bikes, fettling the latest kit, and trying out the most up-to-the-minute clothing. He has won his category in Ironman UK 70.3 and finished on the podium in both marathons he has run. Mat is a Cambridge graduate who did a post-grad in magazine journalism, and he is a winner of the Cycling Media Award for Specialist Online Writer. Now over 50, he's riding road and gravel bikes most days for fun and fitness rather than training for competitions.

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18 comments.

Blimey, these Pinarellos look dated quicker than a Audi don't they

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Skylark popping out for elevenses.

b3ee184670fa20a243ae94041ca3bc7a--dandy-the-history.jpg

Pinarello have been at the forefront of innovative bike design since the introduction of Onda forks on their ally frames if I remember correctly.  I'm still on the look-out for a decent Telekom-pink frame and have just the groupset to go with it... 

Chris Hayes wrote: Pinarello have been at the forefront of innovative bike design since the introduction of Onda forks on their ally frames if I remember correctly.  I'm still on the look-out for a decent Telekom-pink frame and have just the groupset to go with it... 

you mean the onda forks that basically ripped off the wavy design from 60+ years back as the likes of Hetchins and Bates used?

Wow...I'm a cycling geek but I don't even have books that go that far back :-)... I'll look them up. 

Dura ace looks went down hill after the 7410 cranks. but im old

How about instead of a time trial prologue that a short parade up a catwalk is arranged with some time bonuses for who has the shiniest bicycle.

Or have some people, maybe ever so slightly misunderstood what the purpose of these machines is?

How about instead of a time trial prologue that a short parade up a catwalk is arranged with some time bonuses for who has the shiniest bicycle.   What if you have a Matt paint finish, do you incur penelties ?

Mungecrundle wrote: How about instead of a time trial prologue that a short parade up a catwalk is arranged with some time bonuses for who has the shiniest bicycle. Or have some people, maybe ever so slightly misunderstood what the purpose of these machines is?

I'm not sure it's that simple.  I think that most bikes in the pro peloton are designed with performance in mind, yet there are many different looks, from the relatively trad looking Cannondale Supersix Evo to the swoopy and chunky Trek Madone, so aesthetic choices are obviously made at some point in the design process.  I don't think it's unreasonable to judge a bike by how it looks, especially a bike that one is very unlikely to ever ride!

Blimey, the 2012 Dogma hasn't lost any of its hideousness.  And the Osymetric chainrings are another abomination on top of that!

The Shimano crank spider is so ugly. Really, really ugly. It's ugly when used with the faired Shimano rings that flare out to meet the shoulders of the spider. Even uglier when you use other, normal, flat rings which leave the spider just ending abruptly.

Maybe that's just me.

(Edit: Put the subject into the comment, cause the subject doesn't actually get shown!? Didn't make sense otherwise).

Paul J wrote: The Shimano crank spider is so ugly. Really, really ugly. It's ugly when used with the faired Shimano rings that flare out to meet the shoulders of the spider. Even uglier when you use other, normal, flat rings which leave the spider just ending abruptly. Maybe that's just me. (Edit: Put the subject into the comment, cause the subject doesn't actually get shown!? Didn't make sense otherwise).

DA went downhill after 7700 in the looks department, 7800 was fantastic functional wise and the STIs absolutely amazing (easily as good as 9000/1 mechanical) but lost a lot of their aesthetic value for me. Fitted with a power meter they were/are ugly as sin.

The newer wider/chunkier DA 9100 cranks are not a million miles away from the chunky FC-7800-C in looks and was designed for the 7900 series that was fitted to the 2012 Pina.

DA Carbon chainset.JPG

Frames, forks and chainsets are all very well, but what about their padded envelope supplier? We know they were using Jiffy back in 2011, but surely by 2017 they would have  taken advantage of the marginal gains to be had from something like Mail Lite?

handlebarcam wrote: Frames, forks and chainsets are all very well, but what about their padded envelope supplier? We know they were using Jiffy back in 2011, but surely by 2017 they would have  taken advantage of the marginal gains to be had from something like Mail Lite?

They are using these now:

http://www.cafepress.co.uk/+iffy+bags

That 2012 frame wouldn't look out of place today! 

part_robot wrote: That 2012 frame wouldn't look out of place today! 

You just made my day. Thank you.

I would mostly agree.

The seat tube cluster and seat post clamp look very dated to my eye though. Maybe I'm just being picky.

I think you will find it would still look out of place today. It did then, and it still does today.

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5000miles in on my trainer bike with Silca Synergetic and my bottle looks like I can return it without getting any questions😂 I have a very strong...

Id want my money back if Id paid to read it, the Daily Star used to print better quality storys than that, call that quality journalism ?...

“it’s only right tiny minority who recklessly disregard others face full weight of the law” Of course.  But not the reckless majority.

Ducati is the wrong comparison, Ducati sell because they have the Italian sports heritage, and their bikes just always look and sound right....

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Giro d'Italia 2024

A flat stage for the first 50 km and then studded with walls and hairpin bends to the finish. After a rather simple initial part along the Adriatic coast, the stage moves away from the sea to face repeated short, steep climbs that come in the final two thirds of the route.

Riccione - Cento

Completely flat stage through the plains of Emilia-Romagna.

Castiglione delle Stiviere - Desenzano del Garda TUDOR ITT

The second time trial test is predominantly flat with several undulations within it and an elevation gain of roughly 250 metres. The riders cross a few villages and a series of minor ups and downs. The road is almost constantly slightly downhill heading towards the shore of Lake Garda.

Manerba del Garda - Livigno (Mottolino)

Stage 15, arguably the hardest of the entire Giro, sees the start of a tough week of mountains. The route from Manerba del Garda to Livigno amounts to 220 kilometres and takes in an elevation gain of 5,700 metres.

Livigno - Santa Cristina Val Gardena/St. Christina in Gröden (Monte Pana)

A high mountain fraction broken up by the Adige and Isarco valleys, basically a 3-part stage: mountain, with Foscagno Stelvio (this year’s Cima Coppi, the highest point of the race); plain, from Prato allo Stevio until shortly after Bolzano; mountain, with the ascent of Passo Pinei and the finish in Val Gardena.

Selva di Val Gardena/Wolkenstein in Gröden - Passo del Brocon

Intense climbing stage with brutal amount of elevation gain despite its short distance. The route climbs from the start on the Passo Sella, followed by a flat section in the Fassa and Fiemme Valleys all the way to Predazzo.

Fiera di Primiero - Padova

This stage features a single, rather modest climb in the opening half of the route (the KOM of Lamon) followed by about 150 km of slightly downhill false flat.

Mortegliano - Sappada

The stage begins by riding up the Tagliamento Valley, heading north and crossing the towns of San Daniele del Friuli, Forgaria nel Friuli and Peonis. After Tolmezzo, the succession of climbs leading to the finish line begins: Passo Duron, Sella Valcalda and Cima Sappada.

Alpago - Bassano del Grappa

Relatively flat opening at Lake Santa Croce, heading downhill to Vittorio Veneto and the Muro di Ca' del Poggio, which leads into the Prosecco area. After crossing the Piave River, the route reaches the slopes of the brutal Monte Grappa, which will be tackled twice.

Roma - Roma

The final stage is divided into two parts: the first is the peloton’s outing to Lido di Castel Fusano on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It's 16 kilometres one way and another 16 kilometres back before the stage enters its second and final part, the finishing circuit (8 laps) of 9.5 kilometres, which very much resembles last year’s lap through the eternal city.

Venaria Reale - Torino

Stage 1 kicks off in the suburbs of Turin and finishes in the centre. After a flat initial phase of around 45 km, the riders will tackle three climbs.

San Francesco al Campo - Santuario di Oropa (Biella)

Challenging stage featuring the first summit finish. After a flat run-up across Canavese and Vercellese areas the pink caravan will reach Valdengo, where a succession of minor climbs begins.

Novara - Fossano

Predominantly flat stage with some minor ups and downs in the central part.

Acqui Terme - Andora

A fairly flat stage, the only obstacles are the Col di Melogno climb (8 km at around 5%) midway through the stage and the final Capo Mele, which is tackled from the same side as during the Milano-Sanremo.

Genova - Lucca

The riders leave the city of Genova and travel along the coast on the Aurelia state road in the first 50 km. The stage has just two climbs on the menu.

Torre del Lago Puccini (Viareggio) - Rapolano Terme

A demanding stage characterised by a hilly second part and three gravel sectors totalling almost 12 km. The first two are shared with the Strade Bianche, the third is a new one.

Foligno - Perugia TUDOR ITT

Individual time trial clearly divided into two parts. The first 32 km, flat and largely non-technical, lead to the foot of Umbria’s capital city of Perugia. The riders then tackle the ascent of Casaglia, with gradients up to 16%.

Spoleto - Prati di Tivo

Short stage with no flat ground to play with and plenty of elevation gain.

Avezzano - Napoli

Stage clearly divided into two parts. The first 180 km are the run-up to a demanding finale with short and punchy climbs.

Pompei - Cusano Mutri (Bocca della Selva)

The stage begins calmly with the first part of the race as good as flat.

Foiano di Val Fortore - Francavilla al Mare

Stage clearly divided into two parts. The first crosses the Apennines to Termoli and the second, entirely flat, is played out along the ss.16 state road and the shores of the Adriatic Sea.

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Tour de France 2017: full team-by-team guide

Introducing this year’s teams: the leaders, the heritage and the names to watch out for

Ag2r La Mondiale (France; UCI ranking 11)

Twenty years ago Ag2r were a little known sponsor of a small regional team but nowadays they are part of the Tour de France scenery, and to mark two decades of commitment and steady progress they’d love to take just one more upward step. They don’t do corporate statements or anything remotely trendy but show them a hill or two and they’re off in search of glory. A squad that realises the fans come to be entertained and that’s what they provide by being present in all the classifications, green jersey excepted. The clash of colours would be horrendous so let’s keep it authentic.

Founded 1992 Bicycles Factor Manager Laurent Biondi

Tours de France 23 Tour wins 0 Stage victories 16 Green jerseys 0 King of the Mountains 0 Days in yellow 16

Name means An amalgamation of two different financial firms, AG2R and La Mondiale.

Tour heritage Second-place finishes for Jean-Christophe Péraud in 2014 and Romain Bardet last year are the finest achievements so far of the oldest French team, competing in its 21st consecutive Tour.

Team leader Romain Bardet (Fr). Second last year after an epic Alpine raid he’s been slowly building and maturing into a potential Grand tour winner. Will do something spectacular – or go down trying.

Astana Pro Team (Kazakhstan; UCI ranking 15)

Winners at the Dauphine thanks to Jakob Fuglsang, with Fabio Aru one year stronger this dynamic duo could be the dynamite that ignites the GC battle. Who plays Batman and who is Robin will be decided out in the field though Aru is the apple in team manager Vinokourov’s eye. They might be dressed up in baby blue and have what looks like a Teletubbies’ sun stuck on them but don’t forget this organisation have won the overall three times before. Seriously strong squad with no soft centre – they could well be minted in Paris.

Founded 2007 Bicycles Argon 18 Manager Alexandr Vinokourov

Tours de France 16 Tour wins 2 Stage victories 9 Green jerseys 0 King of the Mountains 0 Days in yellow 32

Name means Astana is the capital of Kazakhstan, and also a group of companies working in the car retail and real estate sectors.

Tour heritage Took over the team formerly known as Liberty Seguros in 2006 and immediately plunged into controversy following Alexandre Vinokourov’s positive drugs test in 2007. Alberto Contador, in 2009, and Vincenzo Nibali in 2014 both won the Tour in their colours.

Team leader Fabio Aru (Ita). Italy’s rising star lost his way for a while but he’s back on the warpath again. Never afraid of anyone or their reputation if there’s a GC fight he’ll be involved at some stage.

Bahrain Merida (Bahrain; UCI ranking 12)

Without their big signing Vincenzo Nibali this new team starts its first Tour with no realistic podium ambitions. Jon Izaguirre will be looking for a solid top 10 and maybe sneak a stage win along the way but otherwise it’s animation and TV time spent in long breaks that will be the orders each morning. They may have the money but it would be ambitious to expect many of Nibali’s support riders to mix it with the big guys when the GC racing starts. Three weeks of non-alcoholic champagne awaits.

Founded 2016 Bicycles Merida Manager Brent Copeland

Tours de France 0 Tour wins 0 Stage victories 0 Green jerseys 0 King of the Mountains 0 Days in yellow 0

Name means Bahrain refers to the country, whose government funds the team. Merida, the co-title sponsor, make their bicycles.

Tour heritage None. They make up for that in meaningful sportswear, their “Bahraini Red” shirts with “Sea Blue” sleeves featuring circles that “represent the dynamic motion towards victory”.

Team leader Sonny Colbrelli (Ita). Might well surprise in the more technical sprint finishes but unless it’s hectic, dangerous and he surfs another leadout train perfectly to a good position he’ll be watching how it’s done from the second-row seats.

BMC Racing Team (United States; UCI ranking 2)

Finally BMC have got the formula right for their leader Richie Porte. No more sharing and no more caring for the little Australian: this has to be the year he delivers the killer blows. Everyone has one goal and they all know the drill: look after Richie, watch what Sky and Movistar do and no sleeping down the back. Here to win and if that means putting even the Olympic champion Greg Van Avermaet on the front then so be it. Classy, structured, beautifully presented and a podium is the minimum expected.

Founded 2007 Bicycles BMC Manager Allan Peiper

Tours de France 7 Tour wins 1 Stage victories 4 Green jerseys 0 King of the Mountains 0 Days in yellow 7

Name means BMC is an acronym for Bicycle Manufacturing Company. It’s a company that manufactures bicycles, based in Grenchen, Switzlerland.

Tour heritage Cadel Evans’ victory in 2011 stands as their greatest achievement, but there have also been two fifth places for Tejay van Garderen.

Team leader Richie Porte (Aus). Following the 2017 script then it’ll take a serious assault to scupper Richie Porte’s ambitions to stand on the top step in Paris. Whoever wins will have to out climb and out time trial him. Good luck with that.

Bora - Hansgrohe (Germany; UCI ranking 8)

Picture the rainbow jersey winning a Tour stage, add a Peter Sagan celebration and it’s a match made in heaven for sponsors, fans and a news-hungry media. Two-time best climber Rafa Majka likes a laugh too, so all in all those serious Germans at the kitchen factory must be wondering how come they’ve gone from dour to flowers in one season. With a core of riders capable of putting both stars in the right place at the right time this team quietly goes about its business until the price is right.

Founded 2010 Bicycles Specialized Manager Ralph Denk

Tours de France 2 Tour wins 0 Stage victories 0 Green jerseys 0 King of the Mountains 0 Days in yellow 0

Name means Bora are a Bavarian manufacturer of extractor fans, while Hansgrohe is one of the world’s leading producers of shower heads, also based in Germany.

Tour heritage The team formerly known as NetApp-Endura and then Bora-Argon 18 were wildcards in 2014 and returned last year, but have since significantly strengthened.

Team leader Peter Sagan (Svk). Who doesn’t secretly wish they were as talented, likeable and successful as the reigning World Champion? The question is not: “Is he going to win the Green jersey?” but: “Have the Tour organisers bothered bringing any other sizes?”

Cannondale Drapac (United States; UCI ranking 14)

If recent form is anything to go by then this could be the year that argyle becomes trendy again. It’s taken a long time but the American squad has rediscovered winning after amassing more than their fair share of bad luck, bad form and bad crashes. Talansky, Uran and Rolland ought to make the first selection when the mountain skirmishes begin, unfortunately it’s anyone’s guess what happens next. Bit of an unknown for Taylor Phinney also but at least there’s that magnificent moustache.

Founded 2003 Bicycles Cannondale Manager Jonathan Vaughters

Tours de France 12 Tour wins 0 Stage victories 7 Green jerseys 0 King of the Mountains 0 Days in yellow 7

Name means Cannondale make bicycles in America, where Drapac invests in real estate or, as they put it, “are a property funds management business that identifies value through unorthodox means”.

Tour heritage They have never got a rider onto the podium, but they have come close, taking Christian Vande Velde and Bradley Wiggins to fourth place in 2008 and 2009 respectively.

Team leader Andrew Talansky (USA). Good in America, good in one-week races now it’s beginning to feel like the Grand Tour podium is no longer in reach. Usually falls off at some point so he needs to bounce better and back.

Cofidis, Solutions Credits (France; UCI ranking: wildcard)

Operating at Pro Continental level, Cofidis will be hard pressed to have a lasting influence on any classification but it won’t be for the want of trying. They’ll put a rider in every break, attack at every lamppost and then when that tactic inevitably fails in the first week the guys not on escape duty will be looking after their pocket rocket Nacer Bouhanni. And if they do a good job of placing him in the final action then he just needs to keep his cool. Yeah right.

Founded 1997 Bicycles Orbea Manager Yvon Sanquer

Tours de France 20 Tour wins 0 Stage victories 10 Green jerseys 0 King of the Mountains 1 Days in yellow 4

Name means Cofidis is a French company offering consumer loans, or credit solutions, if you will.

Tour heritage Ever-present in the Tour since 1997, their 10 stage wins have come in eight different years. Their most recent was in 2008, since when their star has waned.

Team leader Nacer Bouhanni (Fra). You know how they say cyclists can’t fight, well don’t go spouting that to Bouhanni or he’ll have you. If any of the anger management training ever sinks in then that will be the day the air gets punched in victory.

Direct Energie (France; UCI ranking: wildcard)

Bring on the youngsters because it’s nearly over for the names we’ve heard of. However old they are, Thomas Voeckler and Sylvain Chavanel will show what entertaining the home fans is all about. No they won’t be in every break, the others can do that, but the ones they infiltrate will know about it. Masters of deception and cunning don’t come any wiser and give either of them an inch and that will be that.

Founded 2000 Bicycles BH Manager Jean-René Bernaudeau

Tours de France 17 Tour wins 0 Stage victories 9 Green jerseys 0 King of the Mountains 2 Days in yellow 23

Name means Direct Energie – you can translate it yourself – will provide all your gas and electricity needs. So long as you’re in France.

Tour heritage Their history is intertwined with Voeckler’s – he has spent 17 years in the team and is responsible for 20 of their 23 days in yellow, split 10 apiece between 2004 and 2011, when he finished fourth.

Team leader Thomas Voeckler (Fra). Another swansong for the lord of many faces. He’d do everything possible for another day in Yellow but being a realist, a stage will be a fitting goodbye.

FDJ (France; UCI ranking 16)

Marc Madiot’s team is one of the few GC squads that still contains a serious sprinter. Arnaud Demare might not be the first name the springs to mind but at the end of a long hard stage he can be a nasty surprise for the other fast men. Thibault Pinot on the other hand is a name every French housewife recognises. Emotions will run high if the darling of France is in the front though it remains to be seen how he’s recovered after the Giro.

Founded 1997 Bicycles Lapierre Manager Marc Madiot

Tours de France 20 Tour wins 0 Stage victories 10 Green jerseys 1 King of the Mountains 0 Days in yellow 3

Name means The team, briefly known as FDJeux for a couple of years in the noughties, is sponsored by Française des Jeux, which operates the French national lottery.

Tour heritage France’s favourite team took a stage win in their first year two decades back and have picked them up regularly thereafter, with Pinot sending their ambitions spiralling with a third-place finish in 2014.

Team leader Thibault Pinot (Fra). Hasn’t quite got the form balance between climbing and time trialling right but there will be tears when he does. A whole nation’s expectations weigh heavily at times but he is still a good bet for the podium.

Fortuneo-Vital Concept (France; UCI ranking: wildcard)

A third Tour start for the lowest ranked team of the race and up until now they performed as expected. They try. But don’t laugh because they do what they can with what they have and that’s good enough to make the break some days, challenge for a few climbs and generally not disgrace themselves totally. It’s a cruel, hard sport and getting a kicking most days for not a lot isn’t pleasant. All they want is some recognition and lots of airtime.

Founded 2005 Bicycles Look Manager Emmanuel Hubert

Tours de France Three Tour wins 0 Stage victories 0 Green jerseys 0 King of the Mountains 0 Days in yellow 0

Name means Fortuneo is an online bank, while Vital Concept – not to be confused with the London-based web design company – sell agricultural and equestrian equipment. Both, like the cycling team, are based in Brittany. Their new name, Fortuneo-Oscaro, has not been officially confirmed – Oscaro sells car parts online.

Tour heritage An originally amateur team turned professional in 2005 and made its Tour debut in 2014. Their most interesting moment so far came when Eduardo Sepúlveda was disqualified in 2015 for hitching a lift in another team’s car.

Team leader Maxime Bouet (Fra). Dedicated nerds will know he used to be at World Tour level with Ag2r then Quick-Step, now he’s a team leader. Solid, dependable and this will be his sixth TdF. He didn’t finish his last one.

Lotto Soudal (Belgium; UCI ranking 17)

Cycling is tribal in Belgium and if you prefer red to blue then the choice is made easier as both World Tour teams are havens of sprinting prowess. Unlike their big rivals over at Quickstep they don’t win as often, but when they do it’s usually Grand Tour stages and it’s usually thanks to the thunderous thighs of Andre Greipel. Once the fast stuff is over then they have plenty of guys undaunted by four hours into a headwind, mountain pass included. N’est ce pas Thomas De Gendt?

Founded 1985 Bicycles Ridley Manager Marc Sargeant

Tours de France 30 Tour wins 0 Stage victories 33 Green jerseys 3 King of the Mountains 0 Days in yellow 8

Name means A Belgian-based team, the Lotto refers to Belgium’s lottery, while Soudal is “a global leader in sealants, foams and adhesives”.

Tour heritage Cadel Evans’ five-day stint in 2008 is the only time a Lotto Soudal rider has spent more than 24 hours in yellow, but 33 wins over 30 years represents impressive history.

Team leader Andre Greipel (Ger). Winning on the Champs Elysees in 2016 saved a disappointing Tour by his standards, but he won’t be wanting to wait that long into the race to open his account this year. Liege will be the first rendezvous for this member of the sprinting royalty.

Team Lotto NL - Jumbo (Netherlands; UCI ranking 10)

A solid mix of experience and youth make up a team that quite often springs a surprise. Primoz Roglic has had an impressive record in the time trials this season, George Bennett won the Tour of California and Dylan Groenewegen is coming into form as two sprint victories at the Tour of Norway indicate. With some guidance from guys like Robert Gesink this is a squad which ought to be present on every terrain.

Founded 1984 Bicycles Bianchi Manager Richard Plugge

Tours de France 33 Tour wins 0 Stage victories 48 Green jerseys 2 King of the Mountains 2 Days in yellow 10

Name means The third lottery-funded team, this one is powered by the Dutch version – the letters N and L were added to the name to avoid confusion – and by the supermarket chain Jumbo.

Tour heritage Enjoyed greatest success under the sponsorship of Rabobank, between 1996 and 2012, a period since tainted by doping-related revelations.

Team leader Primoz Roglic (Slv): Used to be a ski jumper and was World junior champion no less. 183 metres was his best distance, but nowadays he likes a longer time flying along on his own. Watch this space.

Team Sky (Great Britain; UCI ranking 4)

The defending champions must be hoping the change from black to white jerseys also cleans up their fortunes after a difficult period on and off the bikes. So far it’s been a poor year relatively speaking for the GC riders too and though Michal Kwiatkowski has been stellar everyone seems to be hitting the deck more than Dave Brailsford’s targets. Froome, Landa and Thomas have some hard days ahead but Sky still start as the team to beat.

Founded 2009 Bicycles Pinarello Manager Dave Brailsford

Tours de France 7 Tour wins 4 Stage victories 14 Green jerseys 0 King of the Mountains 1 Days in yellow 58

Name means Sky refers to a British satellite television subscription service, and to the particular kind of blue thinking that has fuelled their success.

Tour heritage The long blue lines on this year’s kit each represent a Tour win, and there are a few of them: Sky have won four of the last five Tours.

Team leader: Chris Froome (GB). No wins yet but this is the only race that matters. Will have to be on his best form and, even then, if the others gang up on Sky like they did to BMC at the Dauphine there’ll be trouble at mill.

Team Sunweb (Germany; UCI ranking 7)

On a high after Tom Dumoulin’s Giro victory so they’ll be hoping some of that rubs off on Michael Matthews and Warren Barguil. The former is one of the few riders who can take on Peter Sagan in a punchy finish and the latter can climb in the front group but it’s been a while since he’s been at his best. No matter they’ll still be smiling all the way through to Paris and if they do win a stage or have a jersey to defend for a while then that will be mission accomplished.

Founded 2005 Bicycles Giant Manager Iwan Spekenbrink

Tours de France 6 Tour wins 0 Stage victories 11 Green jerseys 0 King of the Mountains 0 Days in yellow 2

Name means Sunweb is a Dutch package holiday company, making their sponsorship debut this year after taking over from Giant-Alpecin.

Tour heritage Have won at least one stage in each of the last four years, with Marcel Kittel taking four each in 2013 and 2014 and Tom Dumoulin two last year.

Team leader Michael Matthews (Aus). Stepped out of his cosy Aussie surroundings to join Sunweb and it hasn’t taken long for him to settle down to some solid results. Still on an upward trajectory, but so is that guy Sagan.

Movistar Team (Spain; UCI ranking 3)

If Alejandro Valverde continues in the same way he has started this season then the Tour could have a new oldest winner. Firmin Lambot can rest slightly easier knowing that It’s not likely given the Spaniard usually has one fatal day in the mountains to scupper his chances. And there are lots of mountains. That’s where Nairo Quintana steps into the leadership role and does what Colombians do best. With Movistar the theory is always impeccable, the tactics spot on and the back up to make that happen in place. Go on Nairo, what are you waiting for?

Founded 1980 Bicycles Canyon Manager Eusebio Unzué

Tours de France 35 Tour wins 7 Stage victories 31 Green jerseys 0 King of the Mountains 1 Days in yellow 73

Name means Movistar is the largest mobile phone operator in Spain, owned by the same company that operates 02 in the UK.

Tour heritage Miguel Indurain’s five back-to-back wins in the 1990s, when the team raced under the name Banesto, put them among the big boys.

Team leader Nairo Quintana (Col): The lightweight climber is oft criticised for waiting until the last climb, not attacking enough, riding a defensive race. With so few time trials and some epic passes to negotiate his chances are good.

Orica - Scott (Australia; UCI ranking 5)

Normally this Australian outfit would throw itself at the first week of racing, get noticed and then sit back and enjoy the memories. But with two of the best young riders in the peloton in Esteban Chaves and the other Yates twin, Simon, they’ll be involved in the GC all race long. Both are bit inexperienced but the bar has been set at fourth and the White jersey last year (thanks to Adam Yates) and they’ll be expecting nothing less.

Founded 2011 Bicycles Scott Manager Shayne Bannan

Tours de France 5 Tour wins 0 Stage victories 3 Green jerseys 0 King of the Mountains 0 Days in yellow 4

Name means Orica, “the world’s largest provider of commercial explosives and innovative blasting systems”, have announced that their sponsorship will end this year. Which must have been a bombshell.

Tour heritage Short, but Esteban Chaves’s second place in last year’s Giro d’Italia suggested good times to come. He makes his Tour debut this year.

Team leader Simon Yates (GB): A slightly more explosive version of brother Adam but equally talented when it comes to climbing. One to watch for sure.

Quick-Step Floors (Belgium; UCI ranking 1)

As suits their Classic tendencies the World’s best team will be taking things one day at a time. First rendezvous Liege and despite leaving Germany Marcel Kittel will be expected to deliver an epic sprint. Controlling the race to make sure that happens will be the team’s job on every other flat day too. Belgians like things orderly so Dan Martin will be expected to finish in the top ten of GC and Philippe Gilbert win at least one stage. I can see no reason why that won’t happen.

Founded 2003 Bicycles Specialized Manager Patrick Lefevere

Tours de France 14 Tour wins 0 Stage victories 28 Green jerseys 1 King of the Mountains 2 Days in yellow 10

Name means Quick-Step, a manufacturer of laminate flooring, is enjoying its first year as sole title sponsors, allowing it to add the explanatory word “floors” to the team name.

Tour heritage Dan Martin’s ninth place last year was the team’s all-time best general classification finish, but its main aim is stages.

Team leader Marcel Kittel (Ger). Monumentally sleek, the big German provides lots of shelter so his back wheel is the one all the other sprinters want to be on in the last 200m. Then they pop out and the realisation hits them that his hair really is styled by speed.

Team Dimension Data (South Africa; UCI ranking 18)

Things just haven’t been adding up for the African squad this year. Illness and injury have plagued their star riders and it’s been a long road to recovery. But they’re back at the event where they made names for themselves and that always inspires. A spell in the Polka dot jersey will be enough for Daniel Teklehaimanot but Edvald Boasson Hagen needs to reboot his career otherwise he’ll be joining the rank and file at the service of the Manx missile. They can leave Steve Cummings alone at the back, he’s planning a special day out.

Founded 2007 Bicycles Cervelo Manager Douglas Ryder

Tours de France 2 Tour wins 0 Stage victories 6 Green jerseys 0 King of the Mountains 0 Days in yellow 1

Name means Dimension Data are an IT company. Until last year they were known as Team Dimension Data for Qhubeka, Qhubeka being a bicycle-related African charity, but they trimmed it because the public assumed having their name on a Tour team meant Qhubeka were so rich they no longer required donations.

Tour heritage Mark Cavendish won four and Stephen Cummings another as Dimension Data won an eyebrow-raising 24% of last year’s 21 stages.

Team leader Mark Cavendish (GB). With a lack of racing, it’ll either go spectacularly well or rather badly for Cav. One thing is for sure he’ll be fresh and raring to break Eddy Merckx’s record of 34 stage wins but it just might not be this year.

Team Katusha Alpecin (Switzerland; UCI ranking 9)

As a former world TT champion Tony Martin knows all about pain which is just as well because destiny awaits in Dusseldorf. Someone will be in yellow and everyone expects it’ll be the likeable German. No pressure then. Katusha won’t be troubling the GC and as a result there will be even more stress for the sprint leadout to get it right for Alexander Kristoff. If that goes badly they’ll be rewarded with bathing in caffeine shampoo morning, noon and night.

Founded 2009 Bicycles Canyon Manager José Azevdo

Tours de France 8 Tour wins 0 Stage victories 7 Green jerseys 0 King of the Mountains 0 Days in yellow 0

Name means Katusha make sporty clothes, and Alpecin make caffeine-based shampoo sold, at least in Great Britain, as “German engineering for your hair”. Katusha, or Katyusha, is a diminutive of the Russian name Ekaterina. The team are not to be confused with Katyusha rockets launchers, though they are nearly as fast.

Tour heritage Originally a Russian team, they have now moved to Switzerland and rebranded as “a solid international project”. Five stage wins in the last three years are promising.

Team leader Alexander Kristoff (Nor). Almost as good as Kittlel, Cavendish and Greipel; if things go well then he knows he can win a stage. However those other pesky sprinters aren’t at all intimidated by his presence.

Trek - Segafredo (United States; UCI ranking 6)

All the planning, patience and build up has been leading to what may well be Contador’s final chance of another Tour victory. It’ll be difficult though as Porte has progressed and the Spaniard hasn’t ever cracked Froome in July. Bauke Mollema comes in as his ultimate lieutenant but they don’t have the same depth as Movistar and Sky in the mountains. Being isolated has never bothered Contador before and it won’t now. One miscalculation from his rivals and they’ll be chasing a long time.

Founded 2011 Bicycles Trek Manager Luca Guercilena

Tours de France 6 Tour wins 0 Stage victories 4 Green jerseys 0 King of the Mountains 0 Days in yellow 10

Name means Trek produce bicycles in America; Segafredo produce more than 50 million cups of espresso a day.

Tour heritage Fabian Cancellara is single-handedly responsible for seven of their 10 days in yellow, having led the Tour for the first week in 2012. Two-time winner Alberto Contador’s Tour heritage is impeccable.

Team leader Alberto Contador (Esp). Ten years at the top is beginning to take its toll on the man from Madrid, however the big rendezvous are what drives him and you suspect there’s one more GT win to come. An oldie but a goodie.

UAE Team Emirates (United Arab Emirates; UCI ranking 13)

The former Lampre set-up saved from extinction by a last minute Emirati takeover. Most of their focus is on Italian roads and so far there’s been nothing much to shout about. Ben Swift will be given some freedom otherwise their main concern will be keeping Meintjes out of trouble and in sight of a top ten finish.

Founded 1991 Bicycles Colnago Manager Carlo Saronni

Tours de France 19 Tour wins 0 Stage victories 13 Green jerseys 2 King of the Mountains 0 Days in yellow 2

Name means Significant Emirati investment. Since last year Lampre have been bought by a Chinese consortium, rescued by an Abu Dhabi individual and finally sponsored by Emirates airline.

Tour heritage They “aim to be a top-three team within three years” but after one stage win in the last six years it is a distant goal.

Team leader Louis Meintjes (Rsa). Bailed out of MTN when they recruited Mark Cavendish and it’s been a wise move for the young South African. Loses concentration and drifts to the back too often but there’s nothing wrong with his climbing skills although you barely notice he’s usually in the front group.

Wanty–Groupe Gobert (Belgium; UCI ranking: wildcard)

In the competition to attack on every stage and never mind what’s on the menu that day. Nobody for the GC or the sprints or any of the jerseys really but you’ll know they are in the race even if it all turns out to be ultimately futile. Coming from the land of the kermesse they’ll fight for every Euro.

Founded 2008 Bicycles Cube Manager Jean-François Bourlart

Name means The Gobert Group sell construction materials, and Wanty – founded by Maurice Wanty in 1946 – make stuff using them. And other materials, probably.

Tour heritage None whatsoever. The team and all nine of their riders are dipping their toes in the Tour pool for the very first time.

Team leader Yoann Offredo (Fra). Worthy but don’t expect any cigars, or champagne for that matter. Like the rest of the squad he’ll be out front given the chance it’s just that the others with him are usually stronger.

This article was amended on 28 June 2017 to corr ect the year Cadel Evans won the Tour.

• Tour de France
• Tour de France 2017
• Peter Sagan

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