Originally Posted by Denley:
“If it comes to it, it's not impossible to think Bradley Wiggins could be riding for Chris Froome as Sky's team leader in next year's Tour, is it?
There's more to being a team leader than all this anyway, there's tactically managing a team, a stage, a race and politics within the peleton.
There's no ego with Brad unlike with some team leaders.”
I'm sure that Brailsford's ethos in running a team takes priority. The management will know more about the abilities, strengths and weaknesses of all the riders than the riders themselves. They will have identified that Wiggins is the better rider ("better" as being the most likely to deliver the yellow jersey by the end of the tour), and the team is structured to give him the best chance of achieving this. By next year Froome might be consistantly better and might become the one to lead the team. At present he isn't. Everyone in the team will know their place and will have accepted that when they signed for the team. For example Cav would have known he would be unlikely to win the green jersey in the TdF, because the team is going after the GC winner. The best he could hope for would be the odd stage win. Plus the small matter the World title and a possible Olympic Gold Medal. (Compare this with HTC, which was pretty much set up for sprint stage wins). Similarly, Froome knows his job is to support Wiggins, particularly on the climbs.
Stage wins, and green and polka dot jerseys are nice to haves, but all that really matters is the general classification, because that is what they have set out to achieve. Everything else takes second place.
If SKY were to set out to help Cav repeat his Green jersey success, I'm pretty sure they could achieve it. They might have structured the team differently with more lead out men.
If they were to set out to help Froome win the mountain title, then again they might structure it with extra climbers. Or alternatively give him a free hand, so he doesn't have to stick with Wiggins on the climbs. He could then have the freedom that Europcar give to Voeckler.
The problem is that they cannot do it all - or more to the point, the more you spread your effort, the less likely you are to achieve any single one. As I see it, SKY have approached this year's event very conservatively. They have taken no undue risks, because they haven't needed to. Today I was surprised that Froome didn't (or wasn't allowed to) attack Valverde near the end, but they were just following the plan. It did seem to be very conservative However, if they had ANY concern that Nibali might somehow claw back some of Wiggins lead, then why risk it. In fact, they were probably trying to maximise Wiggins lead over Nibali, just in case he has a problem in the next few days. Froome staying just in front of Wiggins will have given Wiggins his best time. It's easy for us to sit here criticising SKY's tactics, but if Froome had chased after the win, Wiggins would have been a little slower. If something went wrong on the road stage and Wiggins ended up losing a couple of minutes to Nibali, then the yellow jersey could be at risk. I know that is a lot of "IFS", but the whole team have put a great deal of effort into winning the TdF, and they'd be heavily criticised if they threw away the chance. Also, they have never won it before, so are feeling their way. If, in a few years time, they have had successive TdF wins, then they might be more relaxed as they know what its all about - but for now it seems to be conservative all the way.
Having said that, I don't know what was actually said between Wiggins and Froome (and their management) 2 or 3 kms from the finish. The opinions of the ITV4 commentry team seemed to fluctuate between Wiggins wanting Froome to stay when he wanted to chase, or that Froome was staying to fulfil his duties even though Wiggins was happy for him to attack. Wiggins then seemed to say he lost concentration. I guess we'll have to wait for their biographies.