The 101st edition of the Tour de France was expected to be a story of an impressive Team Sky success, winning the French three-week event for third consecutive year. Nothing went as planned for the British squad, though, after defending champion Chris Froome crashed out of the race on stage fifth and their “perfect plan B” Richie Porte suffered a bad half of a week in the Alps, but team principal Dave Brailsford insists that they will learn from their mistakes and bounce back next year.

Even though Team Sky lined up at the start of the Tour de France with impressively strong squad knitted around Froome and their second possible general classification contender Porte, the team which unquestionably dominated most recent two editions of the greatest three-week event received one blow after another during first two weeks of competition.

Facing a huge criticism and very reduced chances to salvage the Tour for the British squad provided by a gallant duo made of Mikel Nieve and Geraint Thomas, in fact, Sky wasn’t a team which lined up in the event without having a backup scenario at their disposal. However, while other squads which also lost their leaders and had no one to continue their general classification campaign, like Tinkoff-Saxo, managed to adjust to a new situation quickly enough to turn their defeat into a relative success, things has never fallen into right places for the Britons after losing Froome and Porte.

Thus, team principal Dave Brailsford vows to take advantage of the harsh lessons they learned during tough two weeks of competition, but in the same time firmly stands behind their tactical approach, claiming that they  are going to support Froome and Porte again next year.

"He's certainly one of our best riders, he's won the Tour de France before and I honestly think he'd have won it this year," Brailsford said of Froome when speaking to Cyclingnews.

"What has happened to us in this year's Tour has shown just how hard it is to win this race. It's given us some real perspective. Nothing is guaranteed in sport and the moment you think you can rock up and automatically perform is the moment that it will kick you up the arse."

"When it's going well, it's relatively easy, it’s enjoyable and everybody is bouncing with energy. But when it doesn't go plan, it's a challenging scenario and a challenging environment. That's when you see someone's real character. And if I'm honest, you do learn more from failure than success."

"The acid test for us this year is if we learn from what's happened. If we don’t learn from it and keep on doing the same old thing, I think some serious questions could be asked."

"We had a team of guys who came here thinking they were going to win it again. They lost their leader after five days and recalibrated around Richie, our Plan B. They went into the rest day in second place overall, thinking they can still get a great result. That's gone out the window now but they're still going and still going on the attack and getting in breaks.”

“The way that Geraint Thomas and Mikel Nieve got in the break on the stage to Risoul and pushed on, was a real credit to them and is what this team is all about. We want to win but if you dig deep when things go against you, that's when you see true character and I think we're seeing that in the team."

"You can't expect to win all the time. You can win with dignity and you can lose with dignity and there are three things that we can still do in this Tour: be professional, stay disciplined and organized and show some real character. That's what I'll be looking for in the team during the final week of the Tour."