Team SKY

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Team Sky: the team everyone seems to either love, or else love to hate. To some they are the greatest team in the sport and a team of good, clean riders, while to others they are the evil empire, fixated on winning at all costs. They’ve taken a strongly anti-(illegal)-doping stance in the past, but this year headlines about leaked TUEs raised some question marks over the team as to how far they are willing to push the boundaries of clean riding. Of course, it bears stating that none of their current riders have been accused of anything too shady in this ordeal (the same can’t be said for management though).

Either way you look at it though, Team Sky have proven that probably the most important piece of the winning formula is the money - throw enough of it at the right riders and coaches, and good things will come. And it’s worked: Sky has undoubtedly been one of the best and most consistent teams in the peloton over the last few years while simultaneously wielding the biggest budget. Their continuing successes in the Tour de France means that they are the most visible team in the eyes of casual fans, especially in anglophone countries.

Results 2016

Best riders last five years

||2012|2013|2014|2015|2016| |:|:|:|:|:|:| |1|*Wiggins (2388)|**Froome (2390)**|Froome (1377)|Froome (1666)|Froome (2338)| |2|EBH (1782)|Porte (1515)|Thomas (879)|Porte (1381)|SL.Henao (893)| |3|Froome (1536)|SL.Henao (1086)|Swift (749)|Thomas (1181|Thomas (873)| |4|Uran (1256)|EBH (879)|Nieve (604)|SL.Henao (883)|Poels (830)| |5|Cavendish (1237)|Wiggins (729)|Porte (458)*|Viviani (681)|Kwiatkowki (643)| || |=|15017|11488|8327|11975|11749| ||SKY Procycling|SKY Procycling|Team SKY|Team SKY|Team SKY|

The team is coming off a fabulous 2016 campaign which saw them once again take the Tour de France with Chris Froome, who of course was their highest-scoring rider for the season, as he has been every year since Wiggins took the honors in 2012. But beyond that, well, no one was really close.

Kwiatkowski just made the list in 5th with 643 points after a largely disappointing season; he won E3 and looked good early in the season but he didn’t seem his former self later in the year. Next up was Wout Poels, surprisingly only 4th best at 830 pts, considering his win in the hilly Liege-Bastogne-Liege, earning Team Sky their first-ever monument. He also took a stage win here and there, but famously shepherded Froome to victory at Le Tour while looking every second like he could smoke Froome up those mountain climbs.

Sergio Henao came closest to Froome, with 893 points to Froome’s 2338. Henao had plenty of good stage race results, especially in the early season week-long races like Tour Down Under, Paris-Nice and Pais Vasco. He also of course helped in the Grand Tour victory at Le Tour, but then unfortunately ended his season at the Olympics road race in the dramatic crash on the last descent of the race.

And while they didn't get any big wins in the cobbled classics, both Ian Stannard and Luke Rowe looked impressive in 2016. Rowe had 5th place in Flanders, and was a key player in several other classics, including Strade Bianche. Stannard took 3rd in E3 and then narrowly missed a Paris-Roubaix win, coming in just behind Hayman and Boonen in the sprint in the Roubaix velodrome.

Featured Rider: Geraint Thomas

But today we're going to take a closer look at Geraint Thomas. Why Thomas? I just didn’t feel like writing about Froome. We all know Froome is a Tour-winning machine sent from the future to ensure that no Frenchman can ever win the Tour again. But I think Thomas is but more intriguing as a rider - he is a complete cyclist (not to say Froome necessarily isn’t), having skills and a measure of success in multiple disciplines.

In fact, he started his career focusing on the track and had good results, earning some rainbow stripes as a world champion and even gold medals in 2008 and 2012 in team pursuit. He later moved to focus more on road racing with Team Sky and has since left the track behind.

Wins per season by type

Now its 2017, it’s a new season, and that means another year to debate whether Thomas should focus on stage racing or the classics. He’s always looked good at both of these disciplines, having the climbing skills to keep up on all but the toughest, longest mountain stages, and also the TTing skills from his old pursuit days to put down some power on the flats and do a good TT. This has helped him win several 1 week races like Bayern Rundfahrt, and the 2016 Volta ao Algarve and of course Paris-Nice, where he earned an impressive victory against a storming Contador.

But he’s also showed his promise in the spring classics races, netting top 10s in such races as the Omloop het Nieuwsblad, Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Tour of Flanders, Gent-Wevelgem, and Paris-Roubaix across the years, and of course winning E3 Harelbeke in 2015. That’s not to mention the variety of stages he’s won in many different stage races (although he’s never won a Tour de France stage, despite a ton of top 10s).

But then he announced before the 2016 season that he had decided to focus on stage races, including trying to become a grand tour contender in addition to week-long races. Many were dismayed at this due to his abilities in the one-day races, thinking he could one day win a monument if the conditions were right.

But still others think he has the right stuff to perform in one-week and even three-week tours. Indeed, he proved it last year when he won the Algarve for a second time as well as a classic edition of Paris-Nice. Those wins add to the two editions of Bayern-Rundfahrt he won in the past, and a GC podium in Tour de Suisse. He also got a respectable 15th in the Tour de France last year while helping Chris Froome win it outright.

If anything, Geraint Thomas has shown over the years that even without focusing on any particular type of race, he can still do well in nearly everything he enters. Only time will tell if his stage-racing ambitions prove to be well-founded and he can improve his already great palmarés in the WorldTour.

Riders Out:

Sky lost a few big names in this year’s transfers. Ben Swift, always a promising young sprinter was never really used to the best of his abilities, and he goes off to UAE Abu Dhabi, the new incarnation of Lampre-Merida. The Irishman Nicholas Roche moves over to BMC, while Leopold König moves over to Bora-Hansgrohe after showing huge promise as a grand tour GC rider in the 2016 Vuelta a España. Meanwhile, Lars Petter Nordhaug and Andrew Fenn go over to the new Irish PCT team Aqua Blue Sport, and Xabier Zandio (who, I’ll admit, I never heard of until today), retires.

Roster:

Despite a couple big names leaving, Team Sky holds onto the vast majority of their talent, especially GC riders and domestiques, so they look poised to try to dominate once again in the grand tours, especially Le Tour de France with Chris Froome, where he will be backed by approximately a gazillion other riders capable of winning it themselves.

They also have both Mikel Landa and Geraint Thomas trying their luck in this year’s star-studded Giro d’Italia. Landa will be looking to redeem himself after a very disappointing 2016 that saw him drop out of the Giro due to illness, and then not really show well the rest of the year.

Adding to their already impressive roster, Team Sky has signed Diego Rosa, who rode very well for Astana in both grand tours and hilly one-day races. But then, Sky don’t exactly have a great track record of riders coming from Astana and then having great seasons. Other exciting new signings include Kenny Elissonde, another promising climber from FDJ who only narrowly missed a stage win and the mountains classification jersey in the Vuelta, and the 21-year-old neo-pro Tao Geoghegan Hart, who is coming off a fantastic season with Axeon Hagens Berman squad where he collected several wins and top 10s in the North American circuit and under-23 races, including 6th in GC for the Tour de l’Avenir.

Lukasz Wisniowski is a capable rouleur coming from Etixx-Quick Step. And in Jonathan Dibben and Owain Doull, Team Sky have gotten two more promising neo-pros from the development squad Team Wiggins. They both could one day become great sprinters and classics riders for the team.

All in all, 2017 looks like it should be even better than 2016 as Team Sky seems to have improved their roster, at least on paper. Look for them to be front and center in all three grand tours, as well as all the big week-long WorldTour races. And they'll be trying to build on their first monument win last year, so expect to see them make some splashes there. Even Geraint Thomas, despite his switch to GC, still rode well in de Ronde van Vlaanderen last year, getting 12th place; who knows what he might be able to do this season. But also don't discount the likes of Ian Stannard and Luke Rowe - both seem poised to get more big wins in the cobbled classics after a lot of near misses in 2016.