At an Ineos Grenadiers team training camp earlier this year ahead of the 2023 Tour de France, lead sports director Steve Cummings used a picture of one of the squad’s more unexpected - although fully deserved - success stories as an inspirational example: Geraint Thomas in yellow on the Champs Elysées in 2018.
Thomas had come into that Tour as a rider who was not fully established as Ineos ‘Plan B’ to Chris Froome. Yet as Froome flagged in July after digging deep to take his own victory in the Giro d’Italia, it was Thomas who triumphed, and since then has taken second and third in the Tour as well.
So it’s no surprise that Cummings used the photo of Thomas taking cycling’s ultimate prize to try to inspire the Ineos Grenadiers team, given the British sports director recognises that even fighting for the podium will be no easy task this year.
But as the Thomas picture shows - never say never. And indeed, if any of those riders questioned why Thomas was being used as an example five years on, they only have to remember how close Thomas came to capturing a second Grand Tour in the Giro d’Italia this May.
So as Cummings also points out, being honest with themselves doesn’t mean the team won’t be looking for top results. Rather he believes they need to find the inspiration to be sure they can try to do their utmost to come away knowing that whatever they achieve, it was the maximum possible.
“We have to be really realistic and apart from Egan, we haven’t seen any evidence yet that they can fight for the podium and after his big crash of 2022, he’s still quite far away," Cummings says.
“Carlos [Rodriguez] hasn’t had the perfect prep, Egan hasn't had the perfect prep, and Martínez hasn’t had the perfect prep. But if they’re really good and fulfil their potential we hope they can fight for the podium.”
“Then there are stage wins. So if we’re talking about quantifying goals, I’d say we’re putting 50 percent of what we’ve got into going for GC.”
What can Egan Bernal achieve?
Top of the list of those looking for a good performance, given his Tour track record, is Bernal. Right now, neither Cummings nor – you’d suspect – the 2019 winner himself can actually know what that performance might be. But the Colombian has been slowly but steadily improving as he continues his comeback, and as Cummings sees it, no upper limit has been reached yet. And, given the severity of the injuries sustained in that training crash in January 2022, Bernal's rehabilitation has taken him into barely chartered waters.
"What we can say is that 16 months ago, he nearly died, and to get back to where he is now is exceptional in itself, and he keeps improving," Cumming says.
“So it’s difficult to put a timeline on how much he will continue to improve and how long that will take. “I do know he’s pretty special in terms of his recovery and his mentality. Let’s see, it’s quite exciting in a way.”
What is undebatable is that if the Tour de France were won purely on determination and willpower, Bernal would likely have won more than one by now.
“It’s unbelievable. I’ve never met anybody like this kid,” Cummings says before repeating “unbelievable” three or four times more. “I’m just like ‘wow’, honestly, he’s that special. I don’t say that about that many riders, but this kid - I will.
“He’s a mentality monster, that’s what I see. Ever since I’ve known him, that’s the best way of describing him. His self-belief, his ability to suffer – add that to his talent, the way he talks, the way he wants to win, the way he wants people around him. It’s exactly what you need.
“At the same time that he’s realistic in his expectations, doubt never enters his head.”
This makes him a natural leader of the team, Cummings agrees, even if there’s no indication of what the limit is on where that belief will now take him.
“Often people refer to the leader as the strongest rider, physically. But that’s not always the case. It might be that people call him that because he’s mentally the strongest of the group. But in Egan Bernal’s case, even if he’s not strongest physically, he still leads by example. And if he is the strongest physically then he’s the leader on all counts.”
Carlos Rodríguez: Mr. Consistency
Carlos Rodríguez placed 7th overall at last year's Vuelta a España despite his injuries in the third week. For very different reasons to Bernal, the quietly spoken young Andalucian has still to reach his limits in a Grand Tour. And despite his crash and broken collar bone in Strade Bianche, Cummings is very confident in the 2022 Spanish national champion.
“He’s super-resilient, super-consistent, super-reliable. If you just take last season as an example, he was good in February, good in October and still up there in Lombardia," Cummings says. "The difference between when he’s not in top shape, and when he is in top shape is very small. Other people have, like, massive swings but he doesn’t.”
“He hasn’t had the perfect preparation, but based on his track record, I would bet a lot of money on him improving, and doing all the basic things well. And that’s all we can ask.”
The other rapidly upwardly mobile young rider who will likely be cutting a dash in France this summer for Ineos is, of course, Tom Pidcock. Just a year older than Rodriguez at 23, the Briton has already won at Alpe d’Huez and Ineos are hoping that he will be back in the thick of the action on the hilly terrain where he flourishes so well, right from stage 1. Then there is Dani Martínez, who despite having had an uneven build-up can still shine very brightly on a good day in the Tour.
The 2022 scenario no longer
As Cummings says: “The challenge for us is that there isn’t one guy who jumps out and you say, ok, he’s the leader. You could make a strong argument for them all, but at some point we’ll have to make a decision, because if we try to protect too many, we’ll get ourselves in a mess. So we’ve made our strategy to try and protect a limited number, and there are various factors around that.”
For Ineos, then, the question is how to turn that situation into an advantage. As Cummings puts it, “Egan, say, wants to do the best he can and we’ll support him as best we can. But the priority will be where it has to be. Five protecting three is a challenge, five protecting two is more achievable.”
The fact that the course is such a mountainous one this year, and the mountains are very spread out, does not affect the overall strategy of a team like Ineos, Cummings says.
“It’s more how it affects your support riders. A guy like Luke Rowe, say, might be in the Tour line-up under other circumstances but because of where we are in the GC fight - you have to gamble a bit and think of guys who can best win stages as well.”
The GC battle will likely be one where Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) and Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) will be a level above the rest, which is not at all dissimilar to 2022. But from Cummings’ point of view, Ineos Grenadiers were closer to them in terms of performance 12 months ago than they are now.
“Dani had been good all year and G had just won the Tour de Suisse," Cumming says. "Whereas this year in terms of GC, for one reason or another our riders haven’t been at that level.
“They haven’t won Suisse, they haven’t won Dauphiné, they haven’t won Itzulia-Basque Country. So we have to acknowledge that we’ve had some bad luck, but we’ve got to be realistic. That’s where we are.”
Where now for Ineos in the Tour?
Things have moved on a great deal in the last two years, Cummings says, with Vingegaard now definitively joining Pogačar at the top of the cycling hierarchy, and as a result teams like Ineos have to keep on fighting to focus on shifting goalposts.
“If you take a step back, look at, say, Egan Bernal, and think that a few years ago he was the one…he’d won the Tour, won the Giro, then he’d had this terrible accident. When you look at it, if that hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t be speaking about who would be or could be leading. We’d be talking about the roles other riders would have to support him, the hierarchy would be much more established.”
“But as things stand, we’re moving from a different way, we’re talking about which riders have a chance to do whatever they can. Giving everybody a chance. And make sure Egan has the best chance he can have, not just to get the level he had because the game’s moved forward, but to move beyond the level he was at before.”
“Sometimes it’s easy to be critical of the team, but if that had happened to any other team with their GC rider, they’d be in the same position as we are now.”
Asked to name five things that stand in Ineos' favour at this point about the 2023 Tour de France, Cummings says – in no particular order – “Omar [Fraile] is flying, Castro [Jonathan Castroviejo] is going great, it’s going to be really exciting to see what Carlos can do, it’s really great to have Egan back and then globally, it’s an opportunity to explore.”
“So let’s be realistic, it’s not our job to control the race and that’s going to give us more opportunities to be aggressive. We’ve got to get that balance of protecting the GC guys and give them the opportunity to step up. But at the same time, we have to try to win. So we have to be fighting for stages as well.
“If you’re a bike rider it’s a big ask but it’s quite exciting as well. For some of these riders like Castro’ who have been in this team for 10 years, he’s had maybe half a dozen chances to win a stage. And here there’ll be an opportunity for him that might never come around for some of these guys. So they’ve got to be aware of that, and make sure they do everything they can.”
The fact that they have had so much success in the Tour in the past, and indeed took a podium with Thomas and got a stage win with Pidcock in 2022, is something that Cummings says can be turned into an advantage for this year and beyond.
“I did use that picture of the 2018 Tour de France podium because that’s the ultimate goal and it can resonate with everyone. But I think we have to be realistic with our goals and I’m never going to put limitations, so we have to embrace our rich history of getting things right," he says.
“Maybe we’ve taken our eye off the ball at times – maybe – or maybe we’ve just had bad luck or maybe it’s been a combination of the two.
“But for sure we’re fighting to get things better and as I say, this team’s won more Grand Tours than any other, so they know how to do it. And you have to embrace that process.”
“It might sound like a cliche. You can’t win GC forever, you can’t win every year, but part of it is transition and apart from the overall goals, maybe the opportunities are there for a new group to step up, too. Maybe not to do GC but to be an integral part of the team in the future.”
