intro.txt

THE FATE OF British Cycling changed one day in 2003. The organization, which was
the governing body for professional cycling in Great Britain, had recently hired
Dave Brailsford as its new performance director. At the time, professional
cyclists in Great Britain had endured nearly one hundred years of mediocrity.
Since 1908, British riders had won just a single gold medal at the Olympic
Games, and they had fared even worse in cycling’s biggest race, the Tour de
France. In 110 years, no British cyclist had ever won the event.
In fact, the performance of British riders had been so underwhelming that one
of the top bike manufacturers in Europe refused to sell bikes to the team because
they were afraid that it would hurt sales if other professionals saw the Brits using
their gear.
Brailsford had been hired to put British Cycling on a new trajectory. What
made him different from previous coaches was his relentless commitment to a
strategy that he referred to as “the aggregation of marginal gains,” which was the
philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do.
Brailsford said, “The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down
everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by
1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.”
Brailsford and his coaches began by making small adjustments you might
expect from a professional cycling team. They redesigned the bike seats to make
them more comfortable and rubbed alcohol on the tires for a better grip. They
asked riders to wear electrically heated overshorts to maintain ideal muscle
temperature while riding and used biofeedback sensors to monitor how each
athlete responded to a particular workout. The team tested various fabrics in a
wind tunnel and had their outdoor riders switch to indoor racing suits, which
proved to be lighter and more aerodynamic.
But they didn’t stop there. Brailsford and his team continued to find 1 percent
improvements in overlooked and unexpected areas.