Team Sky popularised the idea of sleep as the greatest recovery tool a rider possesses. A week in July wouldn’t pass without tales of a van pulling up outside a French Ibis and some poor driver offloading a team’s worth of bespoke mattresses and toppers so that Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome could have the same sleep setup as they had at home, which would hopefully result in a rapid ride the next day. Fast-forward to 2023 and the whole peloton is at it.
Mattress company Dorelan supports – literally – Mads Pedersen and the crew at Lidl-Trek; Latexco sponsors Soudal-QuickStep, while Jumbo-Visma aim even higher thanks to Australian company Box Altitude’s rarefied-air sleep systems. With a sprinkling of irony, Team Sky (now Ineos Grenadiers)
