In June last year — shortly before Chris Froome won his fourth Tour de France, one of Team Sky’s eight grand-tour titles — the UCI announced that teams would be reduced from nine riders to eight for the following season. The move was widely seen as an attempt to clip Team Sky’s wings, to try and level the playing field by chopping one huge engine out of the Team Sky mountain train, even if every other team would be diminished too. It didn’t work. The new smaller teams were introduced this year only for Team Sky to go on and win two more grand tours. Clearly no matter how small the squads, Team Sky would still have the best riders.

Source: The Times December 12, 2018 12:00 UTC