Inside Team Sky Read Free Page B

had to take a call, but when he came back a few minutes later he was excited.
‘You know what’s just happened?’ he said. ‘A beautiful butterfly came fluttering by, landed just there, and rose again and flew on. The butterfly was yellow-coloured,
totally yellow.’
    He saw it as an omen, this
papillon jaune
, a portent of good things to come.
    The butterfly, which drops into Corsica on its journey from North Africa, is called Clouded Yellow.

CHAPTER TWO
    ‘The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they
     do it.’
    Theodore Roosevelt
    On the evening before the Tour begins, a staff meeting is called for nine o’clock on the team bus. This is the team’s fourth year and among the foot soldiers this
gathering has taken on the status of the pre-Tour call to arms. By 8.55 most of the staff are in their places, the nine available seats filled, everyone else standing or sitting in the aisle.
Excitement hangs in the air, tinged with apprehension for they know what they will have to do over the four weeks and whatever happens, it won’t be easy.
    At the front of the bus a digital clock with illuminated red numbers moves silently from 8.53 through 8.54 to 8.55 but in a team where everything is timed, it starts to draw attention.
    ‘Who’s not here?’
    They search for the missing.
    ‘He’s gonna be late, gonna be in trouble,’ someone says. There is laughter at the thought of imminent embarrassment.
    Those who arrive in the nick of time are not jeered because they have cut it fine, but cheered because they are not actually late. At 8.59 everyone is present. Where’s the fun in that?
It’s like we’re in the Colosseum and the emperor has given everyone the thumbs-up.
    The real emperor stands at the front of the bus. Forty-nine years of age, so neatly built his shaven head seems part of his DNA, clean-cut genetics. He smiles easily and is a natural
communicator. People listen. His lucidity will carry him through this meeting. It was curious that in John Dower’s beautifully made documentary about Bradley Wiggins’ victory in the
2012 Tour, Brailsford claimed he didn’t really have friends and was by nature a loner.
    That’s not the person he seems to rank-and-file Team Sky staff, all of whom are comfortable in his company and most of whom like him. He takes out his iPhone and asks if he can take a
group photo of everyone on the bus. There is something vaguely flattering when the boss asks to photograph the staff and, immediately, people are listening. They look towards him, the digitally
reproduced shutter sound is heard among the grins.
    He then talks about the memories this photo might evoke in six months’ time and what each individual will think when he looks at it. ‘What you will want to say is that they were the
best group of guys I ever worked with, as good as any team could have had. You also want to be able to say, “We were good together on that Tour, there wasn’t another thing we could have
done.”’
    Brailsford then speaks of his role and their importance. ‘I am just the conductor of this orchestra, you are the guys who play the instruments and you were hand-picked for this job because
you are the best at what you do.’ What he doesn’t say but everyone knows is that the road to this point could be paved with the bodies of those who were hired but just didn’t fit
in.
    Team Sky isn’t for everyone and Brailsford believes it’s in all’s interests if the ill-fitting are politely offered the opportunity to continue their careers elsewhere.
Turnover of staff was high in the first three years, but the boss is now much closer to the back-up team he wants.
    After identifying himself as the conductor of the orchestra, he then expresses one of the team’s core values. He deliberately picks a senior staff member, operations manager Carsten
Jeppesen, to make the point.