Team Sky star Bradley Wiggins has made one pledge – there will be a party not matter how he and the team perform at the Tour de France. And it could pay off for Wiggins and Co.
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The great Liverpool teams of the 1970s were not just all conquering on the field - off it they could drink anybody under the table. They had a motto: "Win or lose we're on the booze". And as they mostly won, nobody really bothered that much if they were having a good time too.
The drinking culture ran right through professional sport in those days. Brian Clough famously took his Nottingham Forest team out to get smashed a couple of nights before winning the European Cup. It was all about team bonding, and getting everybody relaxed to give their best performance.
These days there may be the occasional lurid tale from a Premier League Christmas party, but mostly the sports scientists have taken over. Top athletes understand alcohol damages performance and stay away from it. And in individual sports the edge from good nutrition is even more important.
But there's still a need to have a good time and enjoy competing - and interesting today to see that Team Sky's Geraint Thomas has revealed there are already plans for a major party in Paris at the end of the Tour de France.
"If Bradley Wiggins finishes on the podium, we'll get bladdered," promises the Welsh wingman. "If he finishes 12th, we'll still get bladdered. "It's not the end of the world. As long as we go in and do everything we can, we won't be far off a good result."
It's an interesting change of attitude for Team Sky a year after they first attempted to make Wiggins the first Brit ever to finish in the Tour's top three. Last summer it was all high intensity determination, and a huge focus. In the event the newly created outfit just couldn't cope with the pressure they had put on themselves, and Wiggins trailed in a miserable 24th.
This time they've clearly learned their lessons and the build up has been very different. Wiggins will start in the Vendee on Saturday with far less expectation - Betfair's market has him at 7.0 for a top three finish and 46.0 to actually win the thing.
Wiggins has the pedigree to do well. He finished fourth two years ago, suggesting last year's debacle owed far more to failing to handle pressure than it did to any lack of potential. And he's had results to suggest his form is improving at the right time, winning the Dauphine Libere. Last year's experience should also make him a far better team leader. The aim will be to ride his own race at his own pace, rather than chase favourites Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck up and down the mountains when it won't help the overall standing.
It's the right approach, and with Contador himself under massive pressure following his issues over doping allegations, it could just work. If anybody has a reputation for learning lessons from failure then it's Team Sky's principal Dave Brailsford, and a podium finish would give us all cause to raise a glass!
