Tag: Teamwork

Teamwork makes the Dreamwork

Barring a massive shock, Chris Froome will today win his 3rd Tour de France. His lead of 4 minutes 5 seconds over Romain Bardet all but guarantees his place as only the 8th rider to have won the event 3+ times. Cycling has been an area of strength for Great Britain at the Olympics for a while now, and this is beginning to show in the Tour as well, with 4 of the last 5 Tours having now been won by Brits (3 for Froome, 1 for Bradley Wiggins).

What must also be noticed is that all 4 of these wins belong to Team Sky, who have certainly become a dominant name in road cycling in recent years. As great as Chris Froome is, much of the credit must also go to his supporting cast. Cycling may seem at first glance to be a very individual sport, but the team is arguably as important in this as in football or rugby.

 

In recent years, the quality of Team Sky’s domestiques has given their team leader every chance of winning the Tour. You just need to look at what some of these riders have done since leaving the team:

Richie Porte was a key figure in Wiggins’ Tour win and both of Froome’s previous victories; having moved to BMC Racing Team ahead of this season, he has established himself as team leader and finds himself in 5th place in the General classification, despite losing time to a punctured tyre in the 1st week and also being caught up in the crash on Mont Ventoux.

Mark Cavendish was a support rider in the 2012 Tour win for Bradley Wiggins, whilst also managing to win a number of sprint stages. A prolific sprinter now at Team Dimension Data, he is currently 2nd in the all-time list of Tour de France stage wins and has every chance of breaking the record moving forward.

As if having Cavendish and Porte supporting wasn’t good enough, Wiggins also had Chris Froome himself as a super-domestique in the 2012 Tour. Apparently helping his team leader win the Tour wasn’t enough for Froome as he finished 2nd in the General Classification before going on to become team leader and Tour winner himself the next year.

 

The role of a domestique is a selfless one, as we saw in Stage 19 of this year’s Tour. Geraint Thomas, gold medallist in the Road race of the 2014 Commonwealth Games and set to equal his best finish in the Tour de France of 15th in the GC, sacrificed his bike and his race (he lost 6 minutes) when Froome fell on a descent and damaged his bike. Wout Poels then did a great job to lead Froome up the final climb, resulting in him finishing 9th in the stage and actually increasing his lead in the General classification. It was also picked up during this climb that Poels was constantly looking back to ensure that Froome was still with him and benefiting from his actions. This is a team of 8 riders doing whatever is required to make ensure their leader wins with as little drama as possible. It has been mentioned on numerous occasions that there have not been many real attacks from competitors this year, but you just have to look at how Team Sky have raced, setting a hard pace that they are able to raise as soon as someone makes a move in order to draw them back in before they could cause any danger to Froome’s GC hopes.

 

When Chris Froome crosses the finish line in Paris this evening, it is likely that he will have all his teammates around him. Though he will be the one wearing the yellow jersey, this is a win for the whole team and for a fantastic team mentality. Congratulations to them all!

Avoiding the blame game

When Ben Stokes began his run up for the first ball of his final over on Sunday, it looked like England were 6 balls away from winning the World Twenty20 Final. 19 runs from 6 balls seemed an all but impossible task for the West Indies. Four balls later, the West Indies had made history by becoming the first team to become two-time winners of the tournament courtesy of 4 consecutive sixes from Carlos Brathwaite.

To hit a 6 at any point is a great achievement. To hit 4 in a row is fantastic. To do so in such a high pressure situation… I don’t think there is a word to do such a feat justice! This is a moment for the history books.

And yet when I glanced at Twitter, all I could see were comments saying that Ben Stokes had bottled it, that he had lost England the game.

I’m no cricket expert, but watching that last over from Stokes, I didn’t think that the balls were that bad. I’m sure if he could have them back he would try to do something different, but they did not look like the kind of balls that were destined to be hit over the boundary. We’ve just been lucky enough to witness moment of sporting greatness, yet all we’re doing is battering someone who was clearly gutted at his part in the event.

But why was Ben Stokes getting all the blame? Substitute fielder Sam Billings dropped Dwayne Bravo at 73-3, with the ball eventually crossing the boundary for 4 runs. Bravo was eventually caught out for 35, but not before hitting the first 6 of the West Indies innings. But despite this, England could have still won if they had been able to reach a higher total themselves. England lost three of their top order batsmen for a combined 6 runs. As captain Eoin Morgan said post match “We’re all in this together… We enjoy our wins and suffer with our losses.”

That said, to focus on England’s loss is to take away from the West Indies’ achievement. The headline here should be the great finish, whereas we make it an English failure. And this isn’t a one-off. When it comes to British sport, we are more inclined to negativity and finding someone to blame than we are enjoying the great spectacle.

England’s 2015 Rugby World Cup campaign was certainly below expectations, becoming the first hosts to exit the tournament at the group stage following losses to Wales and Australia. With 77 minutes gone and trailing 25-28 against Wales, captain Chris Robshaw chose to kick a penalty to the corner rather than take the attempt at goal. He chose to go for the win rather than the draw. England won the line-out but were promptly driven into touch and that was the Welsh victory confirmed. It was a positive move from Robshaw and showed the trust he had in his team, but he took a lot of abuse from rugby ‘fans’ who blamed him for the loss. He was also heavily blamed for a couple of losses earlier in his captaincy after similar decisions at late penalties also did not pay off.

When the England football team were placed in the same group as Italy and Uruguay, FA chairman Greg Dyke was seen to be making a cut-throat gesture. Rather than coming out and suggesting that playing such difficult opponents would bring the best out of Roy Hodgson’s team, he was effectively suggesting that the team stood no chance. Not really the vote of confidence you want from the man at the top.

And lets not even get started on when a questionable refereeing decision affects the result!

Players thrive on the support of the fans, if the fans are going focus on the negatives, how can they be giving the players the added boost that they deserve. It is understandable to be disappointed in a result, but there does not always need to be someone to blame, often the better team won. Look at the positives and the event will be so much better.

Rather than focusing on a gutting loss for England, think instead where this team was a year ago as they were dumped out of the 50 over 2015 Cricket World Cup. They have come so far in a short space of time and, with the right support, will only get better.

So lets all try to stay positive moving forward, all we can ask is that the players out there representing us do the very best they can. And if it doesn’t work out, let’s get behind them and get ready to cheer them on again the next time out.

As the classic Monty Python song goes: Always look on the bright side of life…