After Beijing tour de force, it's time for Tour de France

HAVING seen off the world in Beijing, British cyclists have set themselves an even tougher target: winning the Tour de France.

David Brailsford – the performance director who masterminded Chris Hoy and his teammates' unprecedented haul of eight Olympic gold medals – has confirmed that his new priority is to produce the first British winner of the world's biggest race.

Brailsford, who wants his new team to make its Tour debut in 2010, believes a British winner is feasible in the "medium term," which he defines as "five to 10 years".

To appreciate the scale of such an ambition, in the Tour's 105-year history only two British cyclists, Tom Simpson and Robert Millar, have ever finished in the top 10. And only one has placed in the top five, with Scotland's Millar coming fourth in 1984.

Brailsford is convinced, however, that his blueprint for success, which has transformed Britain from perpetual laughing stock to world superpower in the velodrome, can be applied to the Tour de France. For sponsors that would be the holy grail, with the Tour, which attracts a global TV audience of 1.5 billion, said to be the world's largest annual sporting event.

The key to Brailsford's project is funding, but an announcement on the eve of the Olympics hinted at the likely source. Sky TV confirmed a "multi-million-pound" sponsorship of British Cycling, the sport's governing body, backing the sport at all levels, from grassroots and participation schemes to elite racing.

The emphasis on grassroots support – which could include bike-to-school and bike-to-work initiatives – fits the company's 'social responsibility' agenda, though it also sees track racing as having huge potential as a TV sport, an impression that will have been reinforced by the creation of several new stars – including Hoy, Bradley Wiggins and Victoria Pendleton – over the past fortnight.

Yet it is the Tour de France that is the big one, and it is rumoured that Sky will be unveiled as the sponsor of Brailsford's Tour team, to the tune of £24m over four years.

"The idea of setting up a team for the Tour has always been conceptual," said Brailsford, "but now it's a proper plan, with the mission to win the Tour with a clean (drug-free] British rider. Our mentality would be the same as with the track: it's all or nothing. The aim is to start in 2010."

A decade ago, when lottery money began pouring into sport, British Cycling took the controversial decision to focus on track cycling, reasoning that there were more Olympic medals to be won in the velodrome than on the road. But another reason, explained Brailsford's predecessor, Peter Keen, was the fear of blowing £2.5m of lottery money on a branch of the sport in which success would be all but impossible due to an ingrained culture of doping.

Keen said: "My view at the time was that men's professional road cycling was almost completely dominated by an underlying drug culture. In the context of the programme I was charged with creating, having a drug system, or even a tolerance of a drug system, just wasn't an option."

Keen, who said that he wanted to create the sporting equivalent of "Sandhurst or the Royal Academy" for Britain's top cyclists, has been vindicated by the slew of revelations in recent years, which have confirmed the prevalence of doping in the Tour de France.

But Brailsford believes the culture is changing, and, in part because testing has become so much more sophisticated, the sport is cleaning up. He therefore thinks the time is right to re-focus, and target success on the road. "It's a hell of a project, but if I thought it was impossible I wouldn't be progressing with it," he said. "As with the track programme, we'd set out to win, and we'll be selling it to sponsors on that basis, with the ambition of winning the Tour.

"It was always a question of having the critical mass of riders, but it's looking more do-able now. We have the talent coming through – I've no doubts about that."

Among the most talented of the British riders are Mark Cavendish from the Isle of Man, who won four stages of this year's Tour, and Scots Andrew Fenn and the Creber brothers, Ross and Hamish.

Brailsford and Hoy have both made it clear in the past week that they are keen for all aspects of cycling to benefit from their success in Beijing, with Hoy even talking of his hopes for a "change in the cycling culture in Britain".

Hoy said: "If my profile is higher then I would hope it can benefit not just me but my sport. I feel passionately about promoting cycling; it's a great sport, and from Mark Cavendish's success on the Tour de France, to our medals here in Beijing, I can sense a real feelgood factor.

"Hopefully that means more people will ride bikes, from kids cycling to school to people riding to work, to those racing. In many ways I'm just as passionate about people riding bikes for fun – for me, cycling isn't all about racing."