Team Ineos Discussion thread

[mrgmyers]

I can assure you that HE wanted to do both. He wanted to to thr Giro because of his defeat and try to do both. Maybe afterwards he regretted his decision but I'm fairly sure it was his.

Geraint Thomas to race both Giro d'Italia and Tour de France in 2024

Ineos Grenadiers rider Geraint Thomas confirms he will race the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France this year.

www.bbc.com

I suggest listening to the podcast

 

[Peter von]

That's very good point but I think that they've had problems with developing real talents since the Sky days. EBH was great but didn't reach the expected level afterwards, Henao, Löfkvist, Dombrowski, Sivakov, Halvorsen, Sosa....

I know some of them had different issues but in general they don't really develop actual talents.

yeah that might be true. It's always difficult because we cannot travel to the parallel universe where they ride for a different team. It could just be that these riders just didn't have the next step in them.

Or maybe the type of young rider that sign up for a role as a SKY super dom is just (more often than not) lacking that hunger to become great.

I heard Brian Holm mention during commentary at the time, that Uran had done shockingly little wind tunnel work at SKY. So it is possible they only invested up to a point in development on their talents.

 

[samhocking]

I know Valv.Piti is perfectly capable of answering for himself, but I just got triggered.

I've always been puzzled by the tendency of a lot of British people in the cycling universe to think that being British (or Australian, I guess) is something special that makes other people dislike them. I'm probably speaking for the vast majority of us other folks when I say that we don't give a flying f whether someone's British or Slovakian or Andorran or Swedish. Any dislike of riders embodying the early Sky period more likely stems from how they painted themselves as the cleanest of the clean while dominating the other supposedly more dirty teams at the Tour de France year after year. And doing it in a boring way, no less.

I'm not sure it's a 'special' thing, but there's a lot of hypocrisy in the clinic surrounding Anglo-riders held to a much higher account for often much less to be held accountable for than non-Anglo riders. It's a strange view to have and even stranger when looked at from the perspective of proven doping or the lack of it,

 

[Squire]

I'm not sure it's a 'special' thing, but there's a lot of hypocrisy in the clinic surrounding Anglo-riders held to a much higher account for often much less to be held accountable for than non-Anglo riders. It's a strange view to have and even stranger when looked at from the perspective of proven doping or the lack of it,

Aren't you just being one of those British/Anglo people that I talk about now? Again, I very much doubt it's about holding 'Anglo' riders specifically to a higher standard, and more about how Team Sky started out with a very loud and obnoxious holier than thou attitude about being so clean with the implication that other successful teams were not clean, then proceeding to do the same as the other teams, i.e. hiring doping doctors and having the usual (or larger) amount of doping related controversies. So it's about holding the riders to the team's own stated standards.

Don't wanna turn it into a clinic discussion (and this stuff has been discussed to death for the last decade anyway), but again the whole 'us Anglo people are victims of xenophobia' thing really has me triggered.

 

[stonerider]

I don't think Ineos has ever been accused of being good at developing young road talent. Tom Pidcock does his own thing so I doubt he follows any Ineos trainer's coaching plans. He probably brought his own coach to the team as part of the contract deal.

 

[samhocking]

Aren't you just being one of those British/Anglo people that I talk about now? Again, I very much doubt it's about holding 'Anglo' riders specifically to a higher standard, and more about how Team Sky started out with a very loud and obnoxious holier than thou attitude about being so clean with the implication that other successful teams were not clean, then proceeding to do the same as the other teams, i.e. hiring doping doctors and having the usual (or larger) amount of doping related controversies. So it's about holding the riders to the team's own stated standards.

Don't wanna turn it into a clinic discussion (and this stuff has been discussed to death for the last decade anyway), but again the whole 'us Anglo people are victims of xenophobia' thing really has me triggered.

I don't remember Sky being holier than thou, the context of them saying they were going to win clean was because pretty much every GT winner didn't win it clean and all have evidence they didn't. Then the cycling world imploded with Armstrong's fall from grace while Sky were launching within that public disgrace of pro cycling and riders like Armstrong, Contador, Valverde, Rasmussen, Ullrich, Mayo etc ultimately losing cycling all credibility anything witnessed in the past decade wasn't because of cheating.
We can debate if a TUE from Bolton NHS ENT department was ethically winning clean or not for Wiggins, but on paper, every Tour won has no doping violation associated to it since Sky launched and there's been no allegation of a doping violation with any shred of evidence in any other team since either, and so in terms of WADA and 'clean' they were not holier than thou because they did exactly what they claimed they would. 14 years later their success is already longer than Armstrong's and every team now copies their marginal gains approach even though rival teams, riders and manager laughed out loud at the start lines when Sky turned up warming up, warming down, wearing speed suits to a road race, having staff dotted along the course every 25km for nutrition, weighing food etc etc, Now every team copied them and teams like Jumbo openly admit, they studied everything Sky did, copied it and focused on improving the marginal gains model. That in most walks of life is usually held up not as being holier than thou.

 

[Ricco']

I don't think Ineos has ever been accused of being good at developing young road talent. Tom Pidcock does his own thing so I doubt he follows any Ineos trainer's coaching plans. He probably brought his own coach to the team as part of the contract deal.

Exactly, Pidcock brought Kurt Bogaerts with him to Ineos when he joined them in 2021.

I believe since he has been in charge of also coaching Pauline on the MTB, as well as maybe some of their other classics riders (find mention to Dylan van Baarle in the year he won Roubaix).

 

[Axel Hangleck]

Exactly, Pidcock brought Kurt Bogaerts with him to Ineos when he joined them in 2021.

I believe since he has been in charge of also coaching Pauline on the MTB, as well as maybe some of their other classics riders (find mention to Dylan van Baarle in the year he won Roubaix).

Yeah, Andrew McQuaid brought him (Kurt, and Xenia) to Trinity to look after Pidcock. I'm guessing if Pidcock moves anywhere, they'll follow.

 

[perico]

I don't remember Sky being holier than thou, the context of them saying they were going to win clean was because pretty much every GT winner didn't win it clean and all have evidence they didn't. Then the cycling world imploded with Armstrong's fall from grace while Sky were launching within that public disgrace of pro cycling and riders like Armstrong, Contador, Valverde, Rasmussen, Ullrich, Mayo etc ultimately losing cycling all credibility anything witnessed in the past decade wasn't because of cheating.
We can debate if a TUE from Bolton NHS ENT department was ethically winning clean or not for Wiggins, but on paper, every Tour won has no doping violation associated to it since Sky launched and there's been no allegation of a doping violation with any shred of evidence in any other team since either, and so in terms of WADA and 'clean' they were not holier than thou because they did exactly what they claimed they would. 14 years later their success is already longer than Armstrong's and every team now copies their marginal gains approach even though rival teams, riders and manager laughed out loud at the start lines when Sky turned up warming up, warming down, wearing speed suits to a road race, having staff dotted along the course every 25km for nutrition, weighing food etc etc, Now every team copied them and teams like Jumbo openly admit, they studied everything Sky did, copied it and focused on improving the marginal gains model. That in most walks of life is usually held up not as being holier than thou.

No allegations? I don’t want to turn this into a clinic discussion but didn’t Froome have a very public allegation after the Vuelta. In fact, did Froome not fail a test which was only overturned the next season?

 

[veganrob]

Aren't you just being one of those British/Anglo people that I talk about now?

That's exactly what he's being and always has been.

 

[samhocking]

No allegations? I don’t want to turn this into a clinic discussion but didn’t Froome have a very public allegation after the Vuelta. In fact, did Froome not fail a test which was only overturned the next season?

That wasn't' even in Le Tour and he was exonerated completely along with 21% of other salb cases. The only reason you even know about it was because UCI/Lappartient leaked the AAF before it even hit tribunal in his UCI bid as Cookson's rival for leadership. No other case got leaked to the press.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

A painful read:
Leo Hayter on his own site


All riders deserve our utmost respect, no matter how much we prefer their rivals or what we think of their team setup. When we slag them off for being off form or not living up to promise, we really don't have a clue what is going on.

(If considerable follow-up happens, I'll hive it off into its own thread)

 

[Rob5091]

There's a few posts on the adios thread too about Leo Hayter.

One good bit of news for Ineos is getting the current U23 national time trial champion of the United States, Artem Shmidt, to sign up for the team.

 

[Gratemans]

A painful read:
Leo Hayter on his own site


All riders deserve our utmost respect, no matter how much we prefer their rivals or what we think of their team setup. When we slag them off for being off form or not living up to promise, we really don't have a clue what is going on.

(If considerable follow-up happens, I'll hive it off into its own thread)

Jezus... I came here to join in the bickering but that now seems completely futile and meaningless, having read your link.

That was heartbreaking to read. And at the same time I'm completely in awe of his complete and ruthless honesty. I truly hope he'll be able to recover.

 

[Ricco']

Talking about young guys, what's the status on Theodor Storm? Couldn't find anything about his recovery since the post he made in the beginning of the season

 

[RedheadDane]

Talking about young guys, what's the status on Theodor Storm? Couldn't find anything about his recovery since the post he made in the beginning of the season

Last I checked, the UCI website still hadn't been updated to reflect the fact that he's been signed with Ineos since the beginning of the year...
He was probably intended to do a rather light schedule anyway, as he was one of the potential riders for the track at the Olympics. However, when he wasn't selected, I was definitely expecting him to make his debut with the team soon.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Last I checked, the UCI website still hadn't been updated to reflect the fact that he's been signed with Ineos since the beginning of the year...
He was probably intended to do a rather light schedule anyway, as he was one of the potential riders for the track at the Olympics. However, when he wasn't selected, I was definitely expecting him to make his debut with the team soon.

Peter Øxenberg's IG reveals that Storm was present at an INEOS camp in July. However his post only shows Storm playing golf.

 

[RedheadDane]

Peter Øxenberg's IG reveals that Storm was present at an INEOS camp in July. However his post only shows Storm playing golf.

He is aware what sport he's signed up for?
Otherwise, it could get a little awkward once he gets scheduled for a race.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

He is aware what sport he's signed up for?
Otherwise, it could get a little awkward once he gets scheduled for a race.

If he had signed for Liv, then I could understand it if he was a little confused.

 

[RedheadDane]

If he had signed for Liv, then I could understand it if he was a little confused.

I think everyone would have been confused if he'd signed for Liv...

 

[Samu Cuenca]

I think everyone would have been confused if he'd signed for Liv...

Sure, but it was the only golf/cycling joke I was able to come up with at the time.

 

[RedheadDane]

Sure, but it was the only golf/cycling joke I was able to come up with at the time.

Isn't it sort of Ineos' shtick that they're doing a whole bunch of sports?

Ineos-the-sponsor. Not Ineos-the-cycling-team.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Isn't it sort of Ineos' shtick that they're doing a whole bunch of sports?

Ineos-the-sponsor. Not Ineos-the-cycling-team.

Yes, but LIV is also the name of a golf tour.

 

[JRanton]

Ethan Hayter’s rumoured move to Quickstep got me thinking that the team’s biggest issue at the moment is that their younger riders just aren’t taking that next step up in terms of results after showing initial promise. In fact they start going backwards. Hayter’s 2021 and 2022 results were very promising. Top 25 in the world rankings and then aged 23 he just started to go backwards.

Ben Turner had a really promising first classics season in 2022, aged 23, but has gone backwards ever since.

Even someone like Magnus Sheffield surely should have been coached better by now not to keep crashing in pivotal races for him by taking too many risks?

It feels like Pidcock should have progressed more since his debut season in 2021. Arguably won Amstel that year and was probably second strongest at the worlds.

Carlos Rodriguez and Arensman. Solid, promising GC results but are they making steps forward?

Fully expect Tarling to be the next one to add to this list.

 

[Peyroteo94]

Ineos is skydiving