Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed

Author:Matthew Syed
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

Part IV

SMALL STEPS AND GIANT LEAPS

Chapter 9

Marginal Gains

I

At around 9 a.m. the riders of Team Sky, the British professional cycling team, made their way out of a small hotel in Carcassonne, a beautiful town in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of southern France. It was a warm morning and the riders walked to the team bus in silence, contemplating the day to come.

They were about to start Stage 16 of the 2014 Tour de France, one of the sternest tests of endurance in the sporting world. They had already ridden 3,000 kilometers over the preceding fifteen stages and now faced a 237.5-kilometer ride culminating at the feared Port de Balès, a 19-kilometer climb into the Pyrenees. “Here we go again,” Bernhard Eisel, one of the team members, said with a grim smile.

On the Team Sky bus there was a sense of anticipation. The riders were getting into their sports gear. The coaches were reviewing race plans. With thirty minutes to go, Nicolas Portal, one of Team Sky’s sporting directors, began his pre-race briefing. He talked about the importance of the stage and alerted the riders to difficult sections along the route. As he did so photographs of tough corners and steep climbs were flashed onto a screen at the front of the bus.

As he finished his talk, a man toward the back, silent until that moment, started to speak. He had a shaved head, dark-rimmed glasses and an intense manner. He is the man who always has the final word before the race: the general manager of Team Sky, Sir David Brailsford.

“At the end of the day, success is about getting in the breakaway [where a group of cyclists ride away from the main pack],” he said. “Let’s not f*** about. Either we are in it or we are not. I know it is difficult. I know how hard it is. But everyone needs to buy into this. All focus on that. That is our goal for today. The rest will look after itself. Don’t let anyone else make it happen; make it happen for yourselves . . . OK, hit it!”

A quiet buzz reverberated around the bus. Brailsford had struck the right note. All eight riders stood up and exchanged glances. They then made their way down the steps to the starting line of the sixteenth stage.

• • •

The previous evening Brailsford had given me a tour of the Team Sky operation. We looked at the trucks, the design of the team bus, and the detailed algorithms that are used to track the performance of each cyclist. It was an opportunity to glimpse behind the curtains of one of the most admired and tightly policed operations in all sport.

The success of Brailsford is legendary. When he joined British track cycling as an adviser in 1997, the team was behind the curve. In 2000 Great Britain won a single Olympic gold medal in the time trial. In 2004, one year after Brailsford was appointed performance director, Britain won two Olympic gold medals.

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