Ineos Grenadiers still have the biggest budget in cycling, and they still have one of the deepest rosters in the peloton, but the sport’s grandest prize has now eluded them for three straight years – the longest drought in the history of a team founded in 2010 with winning the Tour de France as its raison d’être. And the drought is unlikely to end in 2023.
Between 2012 and 2019, Ineos (previously Team Sky), won seven out of eight Tours with four different riders. Since the Tadej Pogačar era began in 2020, their scorecard reads two podium finishes from three editions. More troublingly, Pogačar’s generational talent is not the only obstacle that lies before them – in July, at least, Ineos have been firmly overtaken by Jumbo-Visma.
As was the case in 2022, Ineos’ young team will still shine on all terrains next season and pick up some important prizes along the way, but when Rod Ellingworth and his staff sat down to plan their campaign this winter, a sizeable amount of energy will surely have been devoted to plotting how to get back on their perch in July.
After a disjointed display with a leadership quadrumvirate in 2021, Ineos were altogether more coherent in 2022 – thanks, perhaps, to the presence of new directeur sportif Steve Cummings in the lead team car – and Geraint Thomas’ third-place finish was arguably the finest athletic performance of his entire career.
Therein, however, lies a sizeable part of the problem for Ineos.
When Rohan Dennis swapped Ineos for Jumbo-Visma at the start of 2022, he claimed that his new team had surpassed his old squad as the most innovative in the sport. But ultimately, the underlying issue is one of manpower and talent as much as of so-called marginal gains.
As Tom Dumoulin always used to argue, Sky weren’t serial Tour winners simply because they had the biggest budget and the strongest team: ultimately, they needed their leader to be the strongest man in the race too. On this year’s evidence, Ineos still have some way to go on that front. For now, at least, Pogačar and winner Jonas Vinegegaard seem capable of going to places nobody on the Ineos roster can (yet) reach.
Thomas, for his part, has already suggested that the Giro d’Italia, with its hefty quota of time trial miles, is likely to be his target in 2023. If the Welshman replicates his numbers from last July – and if he avoids the horrific luck that has plagued his previous Giro expeditions – he might well thrive in Italy.
Egan Bernal is…
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