With the excitement of the Paris Olympics still lingering in the air, it’s an ideal time to share the incredible story of the British cycling team that used systematic continuous improvement to emerge from “zero” to “hero” virtually overnight.

In 2002, Dave Brailsford became the new coach of the team, which had not won an Olympic medal since 1908. Even worse, no British cyclist had won the Tour de France in 110 years. In fact, the team was so bad that one of the top bike manufacturers in Europe refused to sell equipment to them because they were afraid it would hurt sales if other professionals saw the Brits using their gear. Doesn’t get much worse than that.

Rather than coming in and shaking things up with massive changes, Brailsford implemented a new philosophy that focused on the “aggregation marginal gains.” It emphasized the value of small, incremental improvements made continuously in every aspect of cycling performance – systematically, all the time, every day.

Here are just a few examples of the hundreds of improvements they made:

• Redesigned bike seats to make them more comfortable

• Rubbed alcohol on tires for better traction

• Heated over-shorts to maintain ideal muscle temperature while riding

• Tested different massage gels to see which led to the fastest muscle recovery

• Hired surgeon to instruct on washing hands to avoid catching colds

• Determined type of pillow and mattress was best for each rider

• Painted inside of transport trucks white so dust particles that might get in the gears were more visible

With those and hundreds of other small improvements, just two years later the team amazed the cycling world by winning two gold medals at the 2004 Olympics. Then at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the team won an astonishing seven out of the 10 cycling gold medals awarded. And they did it again in 2012.

Following their continuous improvement method from 2007-2017, British cyclists won 178 world championships and 66 Olympic/ Paralympic gold medals. They also went on to win the Tour de France seven years in a row between 2012 and 2018. That remarkable performance has continued ever since with the British team winning 12 Olympic medals in 2020 and 11 in 2024 at the Paris games.

If you want to learn how your team can help you “ride to victory” with your business, click on the link below to jump-start your journey with our 8-Week Program for Systematic Continuous Improvement.

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