THE FALL OR THE FIGHTBACK?

Of the past 12 Grand Tours, Ineos Grenadiers have not won a single one. Can they withstand another Tour de France washout, asks Chris Marshall-Bell

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Another year, same recurring question. Only this time it feels urgent to the point of being potentially fatal: can Ineos Grenadiers, in a more delicate position than ever before in their 16-year history, survive another bad showing at the Tour de France?

The story is by now familiar to everyone: across eight years, Ineos Grenadiers - previously Team Sky - won seven yellow jerseys with four different riders, taking 15 stages along the way. Their Grand Tour dominance was cemented further with overall victories at the Vuelta a España and the Giro d'Italia. Yet, while they've twice finished third in the following five editions of the Tour, they haven't seriously challenged for the top spot since Egan Bernal's win in 2019. There is no shame in that, you might argue, given that no one aside from Primož Roglič (in 2020) has given Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard a serious run for their money over that period - and that only Remco Evenepoel, if anyone, looks capable of doing so in forthcoming years. But Ineos are not just any team.

Britain's only WorldTour outfit are the second richest cycling team in the world, bankrolled to the tune of more than €50m by one of Britain's richest men, Jim Ratcliffe, and their core objective is to win Grand Tours - principally the Tour de France. Slight problem, then, when the only other three-week races they've won this decade were the 2020 and 2021 Giro d'Italia. That's a four-year barren spell, with no glory from 12 Grand Tours.

The British team's main GC rider for almost a decade, Geraint Thomas, is retiring at the end of the season; their brightest young hope Carlos Rodríguez is currently off the pace - at the time of writing, he is already 1.20 astray after just two stages; and after pursuing Evenepoel for several years, he now appears destined for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.