A look back at Team Sky’s rise to dominant success

Team Sky will stay on the road next year under a new guise as Team INEOS from May 1 after securing backing from Britain’s richest man Sir Jim Ratcliffe in a move which should ensure they retain the biggest budget in cycling.

The British-registered team has been one of the most successful in the sport since launching in 2010, winning 322 races in total, including eight Grand Tours and six of the last seven Tours de France.

Here, Press Association Sport takes a look at some of Team Sky’s biggest victories.

Bradley Wiggins, Tour de France, 2012

Chris Froome, Tour de France, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017

Chris Froome, Vuelta a Espana, 2017

Froome followed up his 2017 Tour success by becoming the first British rider to win the Vuelta just two months later. Froome had three times finished second in the Spanish race but arrived at the 2017 edition as the clear favourite and duly delivered, becoming the third man to do the Tour-Vuelta double in the same year.

Chris Froome, Giro d’Italia, 2018

Not content with that, Froome then became the first British rider to win the Giro d’Italia in 2018 and the first rider in over 30 years to hold all three Grand Tour winners’ titles. Froome had crashed in the opening time trial in Jerusalem and looked well off the pace in the early stages, but a stunning solo victory on stage 19 catapulted him to the top of the general classification as he became the seventh rider to complete a career Grand Tour grand slam. Froome’s participation in the race was something of a surprise as he had been expected to focus on the Tour and a potential fifth crown, while he also raced in Italy under the cloud of a UCI investigation into a test result showing high levels of the anti-asthma drug salbutamol returned during La Vuelta. The rider was cleared just a week before that year’s Tour de France started in July.

Geraint Thomas, Tour de France, 2018