Dave Brailsford
British sports coachWikipedia
29
MENTIONS
24
EPISODES
20
PODCASTS
Search complete. 29 mentions across 24 episodes found for "Dave Brailsford".
Sep 26, 2026
JonathanHOST
So bad.
JonathanHOST
But then Dave Brailsford takes over and he doesn't demand, you know, these massive explosive changes.
JonathanHOST
He brings in this weirdly simple idea.
speaker_1HOST
Right.
JonathanHOST
Right.
JonathanHOST
Like Dave Brailsford's approach with British cycling, they use the aggregation of marginal gains.
speaker_1UNKNOWN
Yeah, he focused on improving every tiny detail by just 1%.
speaker_1UNKNOWN
Small tweaks don't trigger the brain's discomfort alarms the way massive grueling goals do.
Steven BartlettGUEST
And I'll give you another, another sort of idea on this.
Steven BartlettGUEST
I interviewed Sir David Brailsford, who is known for turning around the British Cycling Team.
Steven BartlettGUEST
He's the first chapter in James Clear's book, Atomic Habits.
Steven BartlettGUEST
He went into the British Cycling Team when they were the worst in the world.
Steven BartlettGUEST
This is how the whole, um, James Clear's book, uh, Atomic Habits came to be.
Steven BartlettGUEST
It's the first chapter.
Steven BartlettGUEST
That's, that's my friend Sir David Brailsford.
Steven BartlettGUEST
He obsessed them on tiny, tiny things that their competitors would o-overlook.
JoeHOST
It leads me to believe Omar Berrada wanted Wilcox and Omar Berrada didn't want Dan Ashworth.
JoeHOST
But Ineos, Sir David Brailsford and Ineos wanted Dan Ashworth, which ended up probably leading to Dan Ashworth leaving because he didn't feel like he was, you know, fee- being listened to by Berrada or Wilcox and, uh, ultimately wasn't effective in his role.
JoeHOST
So there was probably a, a, a really poor structure set up in the beginning, which again has led to that.
JoeHOST
So there's a lot of, a lot of things, there's a lot of things that Ineos and Sir Jim Ratcliffe in particular has to put, you know, uh, have to, have to, I should say, hang around their neck at the moment.
Kyle ShepherdHOST
oh no
SeanGUEST
thanks a lot but um yeah I mean I just totally I don't know whether it's it's like a personality preference sort of thing but all of my favorite coaches that I study they were all like really extreme generalists like um One of my favorite guys who I watch loads of at the moment is Sir David Brailsford in the UK.
SeanGUEST
He was basically director of performance for cycling.
SeanGUEST
And he came in as director for sport for cycling and he was training like Olympic level cyclers.
SeanGUEST
He came in during a time where British cycling hadn't, I think we'd won a single Olympic medal over a hundred years.
SeanGUEST
So the state of Olympic cycling was pretty bad in the UK.
SeanGUEST
And this guy comes in called David Brailsford.
SeanGUEST
And his whole, basically over the time he was working with these cyclists, he ended up, I think they got eight cycling medals at the Olympics in Beijing in 2008.
Xavier de RoquemaurelGUEST
Yeah, exactly.
Xavier de RoquemaurelGUEST
We could ask Dave Brailsford, my friend from Garrick, how long it took them to really feel super comfortable with the guilloche work, you know? Yeah.
Xavier de RoquemaurelGUEST
I would say probably seven to eight years.
Xavier de RoquemaurelGUEST
For sure.
Hanju LeeHOST
You might already know if you've been listening to the show a long time.
Hanju LeeHOST
It's about a cycling coach named Dave Brailsford who rebuilt an entire national team in the exact same way, one tiny improvement at a time.
Hanju LeeHOST
And that's episode number six, and it's called Should I Walk or Should I Ride? Go listen to it if you want both.
Hanju LeeHOST
I think the reason this book landed so hard with people is it's not really about willpower or motivation, which both come and go.
Jake DeardenHOST
Emily, you writing these down?
Stuart StokesGUEST
[laughs] Um, you look back now and think, "I was a freak." You know what I mean? [laughs] Um, I, I just re- I, I think it was Dave Brailsford, you know, the cycling, the cycling guy who was always big on the 1%s and I d- I think I read it, something he was done.
Stuart StokesGUEST
Um, I'd 100% I would take it home.
Stuart StokesGUEST
If I'm racing abroad, I'm taking all my own foods, taking home.
Enda CollPANELIST
don't
David WilsonHOST
know I don't know how it gets better yeah Dave Brailsford's obviously gone but is it time to arise Sir Gareth and Sir Gareth Southgate becomes
Enda CollPANELIST
it's probably going
Dara Smith-NaughtonPANELIST
to happen at some stage isn't it you think it probably will do you know the all or nothing that's happening this year
Jon EvansHOST
Right, we'll get the answer to that in a second.
Jon EvansHOST
But the reason I mention that, apart from bragging rights, is because the head coach, a guy called Dave Brailsford, is very famous for introducing the idea of marginal gains.
Jon EvansHOST
And this 1%, is very much his philosophy.
Jon EvansHOST
And he calls it the aggregation of marginal gains, where if you can make a 1% improvement in any material part of the process, the aggregation of those 1% allow you to make extraordinary changes.
14 more episodes mention Dave Brailsford.
Create an account to see the whole feed, search across every transcript, and follow the entities you care about.