It is one of cycling’s great modern mysteries and recurring conversations: how committed is Sir Jim Ratcliffe to Ineos Grenadiers? And how long will the British team continue being one of the sport’s richest teams, if indeed it continues at all?
When the British billionaire – the richest man in the UK until 2022 – replaced Sky as the WorldTour team’s title sponsor in the spring of 2019, he did so promising much of the same as before: regular and dominant Grand Tour success.
That, as has been extensively documented, hasn’t quite happened. Egan Bernal won the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia in 2019 and 2021, respectively, and Teo Geoghegan Hart also claimed the maglia rosa in 2020, but since then, Ineos has been left chasing the new dominant teams – UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Visma-Lease a Bike. There have been Grand Tour podiums – four from Geraint Thomas and two from Richard Carapaz – but nothing like the heady days of the Sky era.
Set against the backdrop of the chemical company reporting huge losses and lamenting a shrinking chemical industry in Europe, many have pondered whether Ratcliffe will keep funding the cycling team. The arrival of TotalEnergies as jersey sponsor before the 2025 Tour de France prompted even more speculation that Ratcliffe was looking for a managed long-term exit. So what does the future hold for Britain’s first and only WorldTour team?
Ineos Sport’s portfolio
Ineos’ 2019 investment into cycling was the company’s third major foray into the sporting landscape. It bought the Swiss football club FC Lausanne-Sport in 2017, and a year later invested in the British sailing team for the subsequent two America’s Cups.
Since then, Ineos has poured millions into athletics, Formula One, rugby and most famously into two more football clubs: OGC Nice in France and Manchester United in England. The investment into the latter has been reported to be in excess of £1.3 billion.
In an era of multi-club ownership models in football (interconnected networks of various clubs all owned or partly owned by the same entity), Ineos Sport operates as a similar concept but with a notable twist: it brings together not just three football clubs, but six sports, connecting each of them with one another. For many years, until his recent return to the cycling team, Sir Dave Brailsford was the head of Ineos Sport.
Ben Williams was Ineos Grenadiers’ head of performance, support and innovation between October 2021 and October 2023,…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CyclingNews RSS Feed…