Secrets of success

In recent years the first race of the cycling season has generally proved about as revealing as a government minister, but that wasn't the case last week in Australia.

The Tour Down Under, which finished on Sunday, was compelling and fascinating, in debunking a few myths, unearthing new talent, and providing some clues as to how Britain's new team, Team Sky, might fare in their debut season.

Time will tell if Cadel Evans and Alejandro Valverde will be in Tour de France winning form in July, but in Australia their performances harked back to a bygone era, when Tour contenders didn't hide in the bunch until June. To see Evans, in the world champion's rainbow jersey, on the attack on what counts in the Tour Down Under as a mountain stage, was exhilarating.

Equally exciting was the performance of 19-year old Peter Sagan, who joined Evans, Valverde and stage winner Luis Leon Sanchez in the move that went clear on Willunga Hill on the penultimate day.

Sagan crashed heavily on stage two, leaving large chunks of flesh on the road and needing seventeen stitches in his arm, but here he was, matching the world champion and Vuelta winner, on the toughest stage of the race. He is a quiet, unassuming Slovakian, the 2008 junior world mountain bike champion, but - on this evidence - Sagan is as tough as he is talented.

On the up Down Under

For Team Sky, it was a partially successful and highly revealing debut. Their one-two in the 90km final stage was their second in a week, after the same two riders, Greg Henderson and Sunday's winner Chris Sutton, placed first and second in the 50km circuit race that preceded the Tour Down Under.

In both races, the Team Sky 'train' worked to perfection, with the planning and pre-race rehearsals obvious to see. But in the longer stages it didn't quite happen. In those stages, HTC-Columbia were able to set up the finish for Andre Greipel despite also having the responsibility of defending the German's overall lead.

For kilometre upon kilometre Bert Grabsch, the former world time trial champion, sat impassively on the front of the bunch, controlling the race for his team, before the HTC-Columbia train was able to take over in the closing stages.

Brailsford could have been referring to the contribution of Grabsch and other HTC-Columbia 'worker bees' when he mentioned "the grind people don't see in a race." And he praised the team that continues to set the benchmark: "HTC sat on the front of the peloton all day; they rode hard, and still set it up at the end. That takes some doing. That's where we've still got some room to develop."

Getting it right

Bob Stapleton, owner of HTC-Columbia, was complimentary in return. "They're doing a lot of things right," noted the Californian. He wasn't damning with faint praise, because this put Team Sky in a small minority.

Indeed, the teams "doing a lot of things right" in Australia could be counted on one hand - most seemed to come with no strategy, no plan, and no hope of contributing anything to the race. And so they didn't.

Critics will say that Team Sky also contributed little - that they didn't put men in breaks, or animate the racing. But they did at least have a plan, executed with partial success on a couple of stages (Henderson was fifth on stage one, second on stage two), unsuccessfully on a couple more (there were glum faces around the team bus after stages four and five), and then to perfection on the final stage in Adelaide.

The fact is that their plan revolved solely around nailing the lead-out: having Russell Downing, Mathew Hayman, Davide Vigano, Ben Swift, Sutton and Henderson riding in perfect, team pursuit-esque formation.

And on the two occasions they were able to pull it off, the fact that they didn't just win, but filled the first two places, reveals how strong a group of riders can be when they work effectively together. The bonus at the end of the week was a place on the podium, with Henderson's third place overall almost an unintended consequence of the bid for stage wins, but a fine outcome, nonetheless.

For Brailsford the race confirmed the old adage that there is no 'I' in 'team.' "The biggest learning point for me, from this whole week, is that in this sport the greatest strength is in the whole team," said Brailsford in Adelaide on Sunday. "You're not going to win anything on your own at this level; unity is so important. The team is everything."

But having a plan - any plan - is pretty important, too. My guess is that this fact alone will see Team Sky win races this season.