Trust People - Not Products

Technology can help you win. So can a team bus.
A solid recruiting program, an inspiring mission statement. But none of those things actually do the winning. A million dollars can't ride a bicycle. Neither can a million bits of data. Races aren't contested in wind tunnels. It's the people who perform.

Many people think that it's the technology which made you to a winner. A full-carbon time trial bike, custom made skates, a 1500$ swim suit or time trial helmet. All of these things could be look very cool and very professional. Maybe these things push your ego too. But they can't give you the power, endurance or believe.

In Paris, at the end of that Tour de France in 2003 Lance Armstrong had only a cap of 61 seconds to the 2nd Jan Ullrich - the smallest cushion every. Lance won in 1999 by 7:37 ; in 2000 by 6:02 ; in 2001 by 6:44 ; and in 2002 by seven minutes flat.
Lance said to this manager Johan Bruyneel „That was too close".
Johan: "Never again so close"For the next tour they wanted to ratchet up the intensity for their race preparation for 2004. They analysed everything. Lance told Johan what he wants to do for his preparation of training. It was a near insane level.
But they heard things about Jan Ullrich's time trial bike. Some experts said that this bike is the fastest on earth.

For this reason Johan and Lance started a program, the name was F-One, in which they wanted that all sponsor of Lance come together. He wanted that every company customize their products with the other company. So Nike, Giro, Oakley and Treck worked together.
The result of F-One sounded good. Of course very good. It was a multimillion dollar development initiative.But at the end Lance didn't rode the one million dollar bike. He said that for him it was an uncomfortable bike. He didn't like it. Viatcheslav Ekimov (a rider of Lance's team) borrowed the 1million dollar bike and rode to a silver medal in the Olympic time trial.
But for Lance and Johan the real million-dollar payoff was the reminder that the heart of winning lies heart. Technology can help you winning. But it's the people who perform - out on roads and all across the world, whether their ambition is to win the Tour the France or to break a 300m time trial record or open a restaurant or find a sponsor for the youth-league uniform. And it's the people who have the heart to ignore the distractions - of money and technology and managers and everything else that to be part of our lives - who win the most.