Ineos manager David Brailsford: Sir One Percent

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David Brailsford is the mastermind of the Ineos team - controversial but successful

The corona pandemic was not yet an issue, but David Brailsford knew the importance of washing hands correctly years ago. He told the BBC in 2014, "Do you really know how to wash your hands - without forgetting the spaces between your fingers? If you pay attention to something like this, you may get less sick. It's the very little things, but when you do if you add them up, it makes a big difference. "

With this recipe, Brailsford wants the world to know, he has made seven Tour de France winners in the past eight years. Because he took care of the gaps when washing his hands.

In 2012 Bradley Wiggins won in France, he was followed by Christopher Froome with four triumphs, in 2018 it was Geraint Thomas' turn, and last year Egan Bernal won. All four drove under Brailsford's aegis, initially in Team Sky, now as Team Ineos after the sponsorship change last year. Since then, only Italian Vincenzo Nibali has succeeded in winning the Tour de France against Brailsford in 2014 - and probably only because Froome had to retire after three falls on the fifth stage.

Brailsford is the bogeyman

Brailsford and the British have ruled the Tour de France almost at will over the past few years - that didn't make the 56-year-old popular in France. Since Frome's victories at the latest, his team in France has been accompanied not only with suspicion but also with open dislike. The four-time overall winner was pelted with a full urine cup by a spectator in 2015, Brailsford's methods are repeatedly criticized in the French press, and this is not only because French national pride is particularly injured when their most famous sporting event is dominated by the British of all people becomes.

In 2011, an order for testosterone medication for Wiggins caused a sensation during the tour, in 2017 Froome was caught at the Vuelta with an inadmissibly high value of the asthma drug Salbutamol. In addition, Brailsford and his teams have repeatedly submitted and received applications for medical exemptions for the alleged asthmatics Wiggins and Froome. The British Parliament has already dealt with Brailsford's methods - so far nothing has harmed him.

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Christopher Froome won the Tour de France four times

On the contrary: The Queen has made him Sir, he is an honorary doctorate from the University of Chester and Sheffield, and in 2018 he was inducted into the Hall of Fame of British Cycling. There is no doubt that he took British cycling, which had played a minor role for decades, to a whole new level. The Welshman joined the British Association in 2003, and a year later British riders won two gold medals at the Athens Olympic Games - the first since 1908. At the Games in Beijing and London, the British were already the most successful cycling nation among the Games with eight Olympic victories each. Chris Hoy, Wiggins, Mark Cavendish, Froome, Thomas, Victoria Pendleton, Jason Kenny and Laura Trott - all Brailsford protégés.

The strategy of "marginal gains"

In 2010, the manager took the next project on his list - he took over the management of the newly established Sky professional team: From now on the Mission Tour de France was running, and just two years later Bradley Wiggins, now Sir Bradley Wiggins, was the first British tour winner history.

Brailsford explains his strategy for success with the term "marginal gains", the minimal improvements. A term that found its way into British management seminars and was discussed on television talk shows. Almost everyone in England is now familiar with this formulation. It's all about being that one decisive percent better than the competition, is Brailsford's credo. That goes for the training methods, for the material, for the staff.

One percent, that doesn't sound like a lot, that sounds like tinkering, but it is more likely to mean total perfectionism. Nothing is left to chance at Brailsford, this is never more evident than in these days when he distributed his top drivers and tour winners over the various densely packed highlights of the season. Defending champion Bernal is driving the Tour de France, Thomas the Giro d'Italia, Froome, who is out at the end of the season and is no longer in top form after his bad fall in 2019, is assigned the Vuelta. Brailsford is in his element.

Departure from Sky compensated

Behind the scenes, the man with the striking bald head is at least as successful as the race director. When long-time sponsor Sky announced the end of cycling in 2018, it seemed to many to be the end of Brailsford's lofty plans.

But the Welshman, well connected, managed in a short time to find an even more potent financier in the Ineos chemical company owned by British billionaire Jim Radcliffe. It didn't particularly bother him that Team Sky had presented itself as an ambassador for clean plastic-free oceans in the previous year, while Ineos not only triggered protests with the highly controversial fracking, one of the company's core businesses, but also as a producer of the past that plastic makes its contribution to the pollution of the oceans. Manager David Brailsford is very flexible there.

Fighting for his goals, he learned that early on. Brailsford came from a small background, he has worked his way up, he once told the Telegraph that he had "had from childhood the feeling that he had to be more successful than others in order to be accepted". Last year he survived cancer, a parallel to Armstrong. Giving up is not on his note. Always one hundred percent. Plus one percent.