RETHINKING INEOS

Ineos Grenadiers boasted a winning record most teams would give their right arm for in 2021, but the sport’s biggest prize eluded them. Can they get it back and is Egan Bernal the man to do it?

- Chris Marshall-Bell

“It is time to return to the path that we took in 2019 and from which we separated a little,” said Egan Bernal recently, announcing his return to the Tour de France next summer.

It was just one sentence, but heavily loaded with significance that reveals a lot about the feeling within and outside Ineos Grenadiers at the moment: things haven’t gone as well as the sport’s richest team not only desire but expect in the previous two years. And perhaps they’ve only got themselves to blame.

Even factoring in Bernal’s comprehensive Giro d’Italia win, Filippo Ganna’s continuing time trial superiority, and the emergence of Ethan Hayter and Tom Pidcock as genuine rivals to Mathieu van der Poel and Julian Alaphilippe et al, it’s diffiult to avoid the feeling that Ineos underperformed in 2021.

To borrow a football analogy, it’s no longer enough if Real Madrid wins La Liga or the Copa del Rey; those trophies pale in comparison to the biggest prize of all, the Champions League. Ineos are the same: the Giro trophy is nice, the dream of the majority, but when you have a team of Galácticos, there’s only one win that matters. And the Tour’s yellow jersey eluded them again.