The presence of Ineos Grenadiers on the front late on stage 12 of the Tour de France was to keep Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) from getting back into contention on GC, team management explained.
Part of the break of the day and trying hard to chase back lone leader Ion Izagirre (Cofidis), the eventual winner, Pinot’s move saw him finish sixth, 3:01 up on the main GC group. The Frenchman moved up to 10th at 6:33 on Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma).
Although a distant threat for now, Ineos Grenadiers, with some support from Bahrain Victorious, put in some hard work for roughly 20 kilometres limiting the Frenchman’s advantage.
“It was just to regulate that gap, we were in the same position two days ago with [stage winner and all-rounder] Pello Bilbao,” Steve Cummings, head sports director at Ineos Grenadiers for the Tour, told Cyclingnews after the stage.
“They’re really good riders, you can’t give them five minutes because you might rule yourself out of the podium. The instruction was to regulate the gap, so they went for it quite hard.
“You don’t have a crystal ball, you never know with a guy like Pinot, whether he’s going up or doing down, and you know his history in the Tour, so you don’t want to take risks. It wasn’t bad in any case, we did the downhill in front to stay safe and they went well at the end, with some help from Bahrain.”
As Cummings put it, the opportunity to take a top-three finish is there with both Carlos Rodríguez and Tom Pidcock, currently in fourth and eighth place overall, and “we’ve got guys we can use, we had the numbers, it doesn’t cost us too much particularly as 15 of the last k's was downhill.”
“Ideally we’d have had another rider in the front, but you can’t fault the guys for trying. They rode really well this morning, really intelligently, there was a crash which took a couple of our guys out of the front group. But we were there.”
Cummings and Ineos Grenadiers are already looking at the next big showdown to come, in any case. When it comes to the three-day battle in the Alps, they are one of three teams to have two riders in the top 10 on GC. The other two teams are UAE Team Emirates with Tadej Pogačar and Adam Yates, in second and sixth overall, and Groupama-FDJ with David Gaudu and Pinot, in ninth and 10th, respectively.
“It’s Carlos’ first Tour and Tom’s second, so we’re still exploring what they can do and we’ll be seeing how they can work together, too,” he said. “So we pick a few scenarios and we need to be sure if we can go through them in the right way.”
Ineos have split the race into three segments with the rest days as the dividers, and as Cummings said “this middle section is very volatile".
"There are opportunities for stage hunters and GC battles, while the third week is either GC or sprints and not much in between. But there’s still so much to do, a lot of stages where you can make the difference by doing things pretty well - which so far we have done.”
As for whether the squad is more focussed on the two main GC contenders or more on the podium battle, Cummings said that his two top names’ comparative lack of experience made a difference to how Ineos played their cards.
Cummings said that although Ineos trying to unsettle the two top GC names on the climbs was never discounted, “it’s so difficult to do because you need the legs to do that. It’s quite clear Pogačar and Vingegaard have been a step above, and it’s more about managing our efforts like G [Geraint Thomas] did so well last year.
“He followed when he could and when he couldn’t he just set his own high pace. And really, that’s all you can ask.”
In terms of managing Pidcock’s and Rodriguez relative inexperience, “first and foremost you have to remind to do the basic things really well, not get carried away”.
“But then out on the road, they’re good. They know how to trust their instincts. It’s all about how we benefit from one another, collectively, as a team, and that’s the big lesson to be sure we’ve learned.”
