Team Ineos Discussion thread

[stonerider]

I'm not sure what to make of Pidcock at this point. He just doesn't seem as passionate about road racing as he does about other disciplines. Maybe it's the team structure, where he's just not favored for the Tour over a less dynamic but more consistent rider like Rodriguez. Maybe he's just a mountain biker at heart. Maybe it's hard for him to see how he could be at the top of this sport with all the incredible young riders like Tadej, Jonas, Remco, etc.

Thoughts? I really like Pidcock when he's firing, it's joy to watch that guy ride a bike. Bummed to see him go out of the race. For those who follow the team more closely, any thoughts on the above?

Pidcock doesn't seem to be able to hold peak form long enough to be a GT threat. Nothing I have seen from him would make me believe he could last at a high level for 3 weeks. He always seems to have some stomach issues or other ailments. And he needs to pack on some muscle in his core and legs to give him some higher max watts...maybe add 5 pounds of muscle in the right places. Now he's so skinny that he can't produce the watts to keep up with Pog, Jonas, or Remco. He and Remco are listed as the same height by the way so you know his watts per kilogram of body weight are way below Remco.

 

[samhocking]

Pidcock doesn't seem to be able to hold peak form long enough to be a GT threat. Nothing I have seen from him would make me believe he could last at a high level for 3 weeks. He always seems to have some stomach issues or other ailments. And he needs to pack on some muscle in his core and legs to give him some higher max watts...maybe add 5 pounds of muscle in the right places. Now he's so skinny that he can't produce the watts to keep up with Pog, Jonas, or Remco. He and Remco are listed as the same height by the way so you know his watts per kilogram of body weight are way below Remco.

I'd say his issue isn't watts per kg, he can clearly hold 6.7w/kg for 22 mins looking at his numbers, but Pogacar can hold 6.2w/kg for 50mins and clearly Pidcock can't hold that, so it's probably more to do with lactate clearance and recovery than raw power. It's why he is so good in MTB when the going is the toughest and steepest uphill, his watts/kg is fine, but they don't require 6.2watts/kg for 50 mins to get over in first place or recovery to do it again several times over 3 weeks.

 

[Peter von]

UAE are the new Sky or close enough. Ineos need some fresh blood re team leaders. Rodriguez is good and could get better. Thomas getting ready for retirement. Bernal not the rider he was. TGH and Yates are gone. They look a bit rudderless in grand tours at the moment. The best young riders are currently locked up,, might be a few around next season.

Oh for sure. I still think they are only one really good gc rider away from being a top team again. They still have a lot of good doms that just lack a good leader.

But what do you do when you want to win the Tour, but you can’t get one of the two guys capable of winning it?

Should they get a sprinter?

More classics guys and stage hunters?

Or just focus on talents?

 

[Monte Serra]

UAE are the new Sky or close enough. Ineos need some fresh blood re team leaders. Rodriguez is good and could get better. Thomas getting ready for retirement. Bernal not the rider he was. TGH and Yates are gone. They look a bit rudderless in grand tours at the moment. The best young riders are currently locked up,, might be a few around next season.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1812489751917629628

View: https://x.com/NairoInGreen/status/1812489751917629628

 

[RedheadDane]

Let me remind you that they signed Peter Øxenberg - the guy who exists - for next year.
Young Danish rider, taking the Coll de Rates record while riding for ColoQuick.
Remind you of anyone?

 

[Monte Serra]

Let me remind you that they signed Peter Øxenberg - the guy who exists - for next year.
Young Danish rider, taking the Coll de Rates record while riding for ColoQuick.
Remind you of anyone?

The next Ivan Sosa?

 

[RedheadDane]

The next Ivan Sosa?

I don't think Ivan Sosa ever had the Coll de Rates record.
Nor has he ever ridden for ColoQuick (he'd probably struggle with understanding them)
Nor is he Danish (hence the potential linguistic challenges if he'd ridden for ColoQuick)

 

[Monte Serra]

I don't think Ivan Sosa ever had the Coll de Rates record.
Nor has he ever ridden for ColoQuick (he'd probably struggle with understanding them)
Nor is he Danish (hence the potential linguistic challenges if he'd ridden for ColoQuick)

Just like Sosa was highly toutes as the next Bernal/Quintana, Øxenberg is seen as the new Vingegaard?

 

[RedheadDane]

Just like Sosa was highly toutes as the next Bernal/Quintana, Øxenberg is seen as the new Vingegaard?

A little.
At least the comparisson is kinda fun.

 

[Rob5091]

Well, here's some good news. Bernal does not have Covid, BUT has managed to have flu twice.
https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/i-...our-de-france-for-geraint-thomas-egan-bernal/
"I've just heard the news myself. I didn't know it was out there, but it's false," Bernal said. "It's true that I've had the flu twice during this Tour, but I've done tests and I'm not positive for COVID-19."

(A Lady Bracknell quote about carelessness seems appropriate)

 

[MartinGT]

I love Sir Jim. He's the new Mike Ashley. He's gonna drop Man Utd like he's done to Ineos.

 

[Rob5091]

Long piece on the comings and goings at Ineos -
https://velo.outsideonline.com/road...iers-struggles-to-make-tour-de-france-impact/

But how long will Jim Ratcliffe keep faith with a team that now seems permanently in “transition”?

The team owner’s focus is firmly on what increasingly sounds like an overwhelming task: taking the ailing Manchester United back to the top of European football. It is well known he wants to win the Tour de France again, but with Brailsford now so remote it feels as if some of the steel has gone out of the team.

Despite all the assurances of continued investment, of talent development, of recalibration and reassessment, with Pogačar, Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel the dominant forces in grand tour racing for the forseeable future, how much longer have Ineos Grenadiers actually got?

 

[Barnacle Bill]

David Walsh did an article on Ineos which sums up what everyone can see in terms of their decline and hints at the owners losing interest and cutting costs, with comments from insiders such as (on Del Toro): “Do you not think we realised that?” an Ineos insider said. “We tried to recruit him but were told we didn’t have the budget and he ended up going to UAE Team Emirates.”

What's amusing is, after all the talk of not being relevant or lacking the top talents, about how the "generation change" has transformed the sport, he suggested Cav could bring back the glory days. Somehow I don't think a recently retired sprinter managing the team would turn them around but hey, there would be some fireworks.

link (paywalled)

There is someone who could take Ineos back to where it once was: Mark Cavendish. He knows the sport, knows the people in the sport, understands what it takes to win and he has a rare talent for turning a group of bike riders into a band of brothers. And, of course, he’s now available. Cavendish’s passion for the sport and the emotional intelligence that he brings to his relationships with bike riders seem to me precisely what Ineos need.
This, of course, presumes that Ineos really want to turn things around. One thing is for sure, Cavendish wouldn’t be talking about 2030.

Personally, I'm not sure Ineos will still be around in a couple of years.

 

[Monte Serra]

What's amusing is, after all the talk of not being relevant or lacking the top talents, about how the "generation change" has transformed the sport, he suggested Cav could bring back the glory days. Somehow I don't think a recently retired sprinter managing the team would turn them around but hey, there would be some fireworks.

link (paywalled)

To think that Mark Cavendish would be a suitable team manager, who could restore the team to its former glories. Wow, that's some serious delusional fanboyism.

But, I'm all for it. Would love to to see Cav rage against the media next time Ineos fails to have any meaningful success in the Tour.

 

[wansteadimp]

To think that Mark Cavendish would be a suitable team manager, who could restore the team to its former glories. Wow, that's some serious delusional fanboyism.

But, I'm all for it. Would love to to see Cav rage against the media next time Ineos fails to have any meaningful success in the Tour.

Would he be worse than Steve Cummings though? - "that's right Ethan, fight for Yates wheel, make sure your last man, keep watching the French lads and make your move when they look like they're dropping the ball"

 

[Escarabajo]

David Walsh did an article on Ineos which sums up what everyone can see in terms of their decline and hints at the owners losing interest and cutting costs, with comments from insiders such as (on Del Toro): “Do you not think we realised that?” an Ineos insider said. “We tried to recruit him but were told we didn’t have the budget and he ended up going to UAE Team Emirates.”

What's amusing is, after all the talk of not being relevant or lacking the top talents, about how the "generation change" has transformed the sport, he suggested Cav could bring back the glory days. Somehow I don't think a recently retired sprinter managing the team would turn them around but hey, there would be some fireworks.

link (paywalled)


Personally, I'm not sure Ineos will still be around in a couple of years.

I agree with you 100%. INEOS won't be around for long. And suggesting that Jim Ratcliffe will have no patience on how things are going is very stupid when he is the one cutting the costs and moving the pieces around. When I read that they were pulling management to other sports and were cutting costs I thought the INEOS days are counted.

 

[Escarabajo]

Well, here's some good news. Bernal does not have Covid, BUT has managed to have flu twice.
https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/i-...our-de-france-for-geraint-thomas-egan-bernal/
"I've just heard the news myself. I didn't know it was out there, but it's false," Bernal said. "It's true that I've had the flu twice during this Tour, but I've done tests and I'm not positive for COVID-19."

(A Lady Bracknell quote about carelessness seems appropriate)

I think there is something lost in translation. I heard Bernal's podcast and his interviews and it wasn't flu. They used that word very freely in Colombia for a mere cold. Trust me if he had the flu twice during the Tour he would have to be pulled in a wheelbarrow.

 

[Rob5091]

I think there is something lost in translation. I heard Bernal's podcast and his interviews and it wasn't flu. They used that word very freely in Colombia for a mere cold. Trust me if he had the flu twice during the Tour he would have to be pulled in a wheelbarrow.

Some guy at the Tour had broken bones and a punctured lung not long ago, so having the "flu" twice is nothing!

 

[samhocking]

I agree with you 100%. INEOS won't be around for long. And suggesting that Jim Ratcliffe will have no patience on how things are going is very stupid when he is the one cutting the costs and moving the pieces around. When I read that they were pulling management to other sports and were cutting costs I thought the INEOS days are counted.

Ineos are also the owner so with contracts in place through to end of 2027 I'd imagine Brailsford and Blanc at Ineos HQ have given Allert 4 years to try and catch up. As Thomas hinted at in Nice, the component currently missing in the Team is they haven't had a Braislford figure driving the team, but equally I think it's unfair to judge Allert after only a few months in the job. It took Gianetti and Plugge a decade to catch up with Sky really.

 

[Unterlenkerfahrend]

One of the few positives in the cycling world recently has how terrible they have been. What a disasterclass of a Tour, hilarious. Rodriguez finishing about half an hour behind in 7th, how the mighty have fallen. I'm so happy they didn't get bailed out by a Kwiatkowski win on stage 18.
The team seemingly has no direction, they got lucky that Thomas manage to sneak onto the Podium in a terrible terrible Giro field, apart from that they have Ganna performing consistently and Pidcock at least got Amstel but outside of that? I don't even know what they're going for at the Vuelta? They have no sprinter (not counting Hayter, as he is incapable of position himself), no GC contender (Rodriguez will be toast after the Tour and Arensman is hardly inspiring) and even long term I don't see much changing.

Now that Brexit Jim has United as his shining toy it wouldn't surprise me if they just run things on a low budget, trying to bank in a bit on the marketing side of Pidcock and Ganna and then just call it a day in a few years.

 

[samhocking]

Teams rising to the top, dominating for a few years with a goal, a group of riders and staff, then falling back, sometimes returning again a decade later to do it again, sometimes not, sometimes disappearing is the default pattern all teams have followed throughout cycling history so I wouldn't call not repeating dominance decade after decade a disasterclasss, it's simply the expected ebb and flow of pro cycling teams winning and not winning.
I do think the subsequent blows of a sudden end of Froomes dominance and then Bernals too from career-denfining crashes has taken the momentum out of what Brailsford started though. If we took Pogacar out of UAE or Vingo out Visma with equally bad crashes, they too are probably scraping podiums for a decade or so after because it took a decade of momentum to get from Ineos's current level to beating them too.

 

[Wyndbrook]

One of the few positives in the cycling world recently has how terrible they have been. What a disasterclass of a Tour, hilarious. Rodriguez finishing about half an hour behind in 7th, how the mighty have fallen. I'm so happy they didn't get bailed out by a Kwiatkowski win on stage 18.
The team seemingly has no direction, they got lucky that Thomas manage to sneak onto the Podium in a terrible terrible Giro field, apart from that they have Ganna performing consistently and Pidcock at least got Amstel but outside of that? I don't even know what they're going for at the Vuelta? They have no sprinter (not counting Hayter, as he is incapable of position himself), no GC contender (Rodriguez will be toast after the Tour and Arensman is hardly inspiring) and even long term I don't see much changing.

Now that Brexit Jim has United as his shining toy it wouldn't surprise me if they just run things on a low budget, trying to bank in a bit on the marketing side of Pidcock and Ganna and then just call it a day in a few years.

Americas Cup is only a month away, maybe more than a few million going spare if Ineos do not invest in the next four year cycle.

 

[JRanton]

I think people would be surprised how big their budget still is despite the obvious loss of talent in recent seasons. They are paying Bernal and Pidcock like they are top 5/10 riders in the world after their contract extensions.

Ganna, Rodriguez and Hayter also signed big extensions. Geraint Thomas is still very well paid. The problem is these guys are just not performing up to the level of their contracts (Probably unfair to Thomas who is still picking up grand tour podium results). Hayter is leaving at the end of this year, Thomas is retiring at the end of next. Bernal’s huge contract still has two years to run.

By the way, when discussing Ineos, you can’t just avoid mentioning that Bernal was obviously meant to be the Ineos leader for years to come prior to his terrible crash. That has played a massive part in their downfall even if a healthy Bernal might well have struggled to compete with Pogacar and Jonas.

Carapaz, Adam Yates, Tao, Sivakov and Dani Martinez are all good riders but realistically none of them were going to compete with the top guys so why sign them to expensive extensions?

 

[xo 1]

I'm less bothered by the failure to achieve a TdF podium in 2024 than by how mid the team has been at most other races. As JRanton observes, this is an expensive roster for mediocre results. Some of that I suspect is driven by how the Olympic ambitions of several of their strongest riders, such as Ganna, Tarling, Pidcock, and Sheffield, have shaped their calendar. But a bigger concern for me is that INEOS have collected a number of terrific young talents who don't have obvious paths to winning races. Tarling for example has been very impressive, but I'm skeptical that he will be able to make the leap from ace time trialist to ace time trialist plus. Ganna may be the most optimistic projection for career arc.

 

[SafeBet]

Carapaz, Adam Yates, Tao, Sivakov and Dani Martinez are all good riders but realistically none of them were going to compete with the top guys so why sign them to expensive extensions?

I understand letting TGH, Sivakov and Martinez go. There were question marks over all of them, for different reasons.

But Carapaz and Adam Yates are more than simply good riders. They were both performing at a very high level for Ineos before leaving the team. To me they are exactly the type of riders that will keep you afloat when you have none of the top guys and hence no shot at winning the TdF. I mean, put them in this year's roster and Ineos' Tour de France performance suddenly doesn't look as bleak as it was.
I struggle to see how this happens if there's no budget reduction.