Who won Critérium du Dauphiné: Team Sky or Britain?

In the final weeks before the Tour de France takes over ITV for July and suddenly everyone you know buys a bike and matching Lycra, you’ll find some cycling fans banging on about a bunch of races you’ve never heard of. But these non-ITV races are important, and Critérium du Dauphiné is one such race.

Another French race, the weeklong Dauphiné is a strong indicator of who’s on good form for the Tour. Sir Bradley Wiggins won the Tour in 2012 after winning the Dauphiné a few weeks before, and the same can be said for Chris Froome’s 2013 and 2015 Tour wins. Hopefully, that means that Froome’s win yesterday will mean he’ll take the win on the Tour this year, too.

Since Sir Bradley Wiggins’ Tour win in 2012, the world of British road cycling has become largely dominated by Team Sky, after they embarked on a mission in 2010 to “create the first British winner of the Tour de France within five years”. With Wiggins’ win and Froome’s subsequent victory they achieved this goal twice, but they’re far from the be all and end all in British road cycling.

This year’s Critérium du Dauphiné general classification jersey was won by Froome after his win on Stage 5 saw him don the yellow jersey and not take it off again. It’s unsurprising with their ability to control a race and consistently put Froome in the best position that Team Sky were winners of the team classification from the start of the Dauphiné.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N73dTc9zYBs

But it’s not like British success is unrealistic without Team Sky – it’s been happening for years. Thomas Simpson, one of Britain’s most successful cyclists and the first British rider to wear the yellow jersey at the Tour, died in 1967 on Mont Ventoux – when Team Sky’s general manager, Dave Brailsford, was three years old.

It would be fairer to say that Team Sky brought a new enthusiasm to British Cycling, and the outcome of the Dauphiné proves it. Of the top 10 results for the prologue and each of the seven stages, there are seven positions claimed by members of Team Sky and ten claimed by British cyclists. When you consider that Froome took five top 10 positions, that leaves two top 10s for Sky, and five for Britain.

Now who’s the winner?

Of course, this isn’t to trivialise what Team Sky have achieved with their general and team classification wins. In fact, it’s perhaps more to their merit that they’ve inspired a surge in the growth and success of British cycling.
It’s one thing that 35-year-old Steve Cummings, and ex-Sky rider, won today’s final stage, but quite another that 23-year-old Adam Yates of Australia’s ORICA-GreenEDGE team took four top 10s.

It will take a few years before the young hopefuls of today are winning Tour stages (or jerseys), but the biggest thing this year’s Dauphiné has indicated is a boom for Britain’s world of road cycling.