• Cycling

Brailsford eyes next phase for Team Sky

Bradley Wiggins has prospered under Dave Brailsford's direction © PA Photos

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Team Sky general manager Dave Brailsford has ambitious plans to ensure the team's recent run of success is extended.

Brailsford is widely regarded as the mastermind behind British success at both London 2012 and in the Tour de France, as the likes of Bradley Wiggins, Sir Chris Hoy and Mark Cavendish have become household names after finding success under his direction.

With results so good, the 48-year-old believes structural changes will now be needed to ensure progress continues.

"The danger with making everything results-based is that once you get the result, where do you go?," Brailsford told the Telegraph. "That's when you can go into decline rapidly. You've got to have something bigger."

A base for the team, one that the public can visit, is one of the ambitions for Brailsford.

"You can go to Chelsea, and see their shop, and see their stadium," he noted. "You can't go and see Team Sky, or Rabobank - not that you'd want to see Rabobank.

"It's time that we came together and had a coaching base, similar to what we've had in British cycling, where you pull together expertise in a single location. We're trying to create a home where people can come and see Team Sky."

Brailsford is noted for his meticulous approach to cycling and his belief that a series of 'marginal gains' can be the difference between victory and defeat. This extends to the smallest details.

"Take beds, for example," he said. "If you think of an elite athlete as a highly-tuned car, you wouldn't get him to sleep in a different bed every night. Different mattresses, with different stiffnesses, different pillows. You just wouldn't do it.

"So the solution was to create our own bedding and take it around, so Bradley Wiggins has the mattress structure which is right for his spine, and he sleeps with it every night."

Brailsford also hinted that a women's team could be in the pipeline - a chance to give the likes of Lizzie Armitstead, Nicole Cooke and Emma Pooley more stability in their road pursuits. Members of Team GB's dominant track cycling squad may also be involved.

"As it currently exists you've got Laura Trott, Jo Rowsell and Dani King, then you've got three or four very good Welsh riders, including Lucy Garner, and that's where there is something to be done," Brailsford said. "There's a development model, and we've identified it as potentially an area where we could do something."

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