Ineos still looking for their next Tour de France winner - 2023 Team Preview

Ineos Grenadiers still have the biggest budget in cycling, and they still have one of the deepest rosters in the peloton, but the sport’s grandest prize has now eluded them for three straight years – the longest drought in the history of a team founded in 2010 with winning the Tour de France as its raison d’être. And the drought is unlikely to end in 2023.

Between 2012 and 2019, Ineos (previously Team Sky), won seven out of eight Tours with four different riders. Since the Tadej Pogačar era began in 2020, their scorecard reads two podium finishes from three editions. More troublingly, Pogačar’s generational talent is not the only obstacle that lies before them – in July, at least, Ineos have been firmly overtaken by Jumbo-Visma.

As was the case in 2022, Ineos’ young team will still shine on all terrains next season and pick up some important prizes along the way, but when Rod Ellingworth and his staff sat down to plan their campaign this winter, a sizeable amount of energy will surely have been devoted to plotting how to get back on their perch in July.

After a disjointed display with a leadership quadrumvirate in 2021, Ineos were altogether more coherent in 2022 - thanks, perhaps, to the presence of new directeur sportif Steve Cummings in the lead team car - and Geraint Thomas’ third-place finish was arguably the finest athletic performance of his entire career. 

Therein, however, lies a sizeable part of the problem for Ineos.

When Rohan Dennis swapped Ineos for Jumbo-Visma at the start of 2022, he claimed that his new team had surpassed his old squad as the most innovative in the sport. But ultimately, the underlying issue is one of manpower and talent as much as of so-called marginal gains.

As Tom Dumoulin always used to argue, Sky weren’t serial Tour winners simply because they had the biggest budget and the strongest team: ultimately, they needed their leader to be the strongest man in the race too. On this year’s evidence, Ineos still have some way to go on that front. For now, at least, Pogačar and winner Jonas Vinegegaard seem capable of going to places nobody on the Ineos roster can (yet) reach.

Thomas, for his part, has already suggested that the Giro d’Italia, with its hefty quota of time trial miles, is likely to be his target in 2023. If the Welshman replicates his numbers from last July – and if he avoids the horrific luck that has plagued his previous Giro expeditions – he might well thrive in Italy.

Egan Bernal is thus the man most likely to lead the line for Ineos at the Tour, but there are understandably few guarantees about his prospects as he continues his recovery from the life-threatening crash that ruled him out for most of 2022. The Colombian looked a multiple Tour winner in waiting when he rode into Paris in the maillot jaune in 2019, but a nagging back injury ruined his title defence a year later, just as Pogacar was confirming his promise.

Bernal’s fine victory on the 2021 Giro only whetted the appetite for a true Pogacar-Bernal duel on the 2022 Tour, but he would instead spend most of the year rehabilitating from his horrific series of injuries, which included fractured vertebrae, a fractured right femur, a fractured right patella, chest trauma, a punctured lung, and several fractured ribs.

It's already a near miracle that Bernal is back on his bike and racing again, but to go from here to winning the Tour once more would be a feat to equal Greg LeMond’s comeback in 1989. 

It would be hasty, of course, to write off Bernal, a rider whose class on a bike is matched by his determined character off it. Even his willingness to admit so openly to his vulnerabilities – “I won the Tour at 22 and I didn’t know what to do with my life,” he once confessed – feels more like a strength than a weakness.

But sheer force of personality alone won’t suffice for Bernal. His chances in July are still contingent on his physical recovery, and his opening races of 2023 will be instructive. Ineos will look to shepherd him as best they can towards the Tour, but they also must be looking closely at back-up options for July.

The other Grand Tour winner in their roster is Tao Geoghegan Hart, but one senses Daní Martínez or Pavel Sivakov are now more likely alternatives to lead at the Tour. Carlos Rodríguez’s rapid development is also worth following, but the Spaniard is reportedly being primed for the Giro or the Vuelta along with new arrival Thymen Aresman.

That, of course, leaves Tom Pidcock, who so impressed en route to 16th overall in his debut Tour in 2022. His stylish victory at Alpe d’Huez was the highlight, but his displays across the three weeks augured well for his future prospects in Grand Tours. 

Were this the Team Sky of a decade ago, the 23-year-old’s focus would almost certainly have been already diverted firmly towards the Tour but, for the time being, Ineos seem content to keep on letting Pidcock be Pidcock – that is, a multi-discipline talent with the freedom to choose his targets across the calendar.

Pidcock is again racing a compact but intense cyclo-cross schedule this winter, but he has yet to sketch out his road programme for 2023. He will certainly be a part of Ineos’ Tour team, but his role is still to be defined. 

“It’s kind of up to me to figure out what I want to do in the Tour next year,” Pidcock told Cyclingnews in October. “One day I want to try and win the Tour. Whether I'm good enough next year, I don’t know.”

In the longer term, Ineos are keen to find out. They have allowed riders of the experience of Richard Carapaz and Dylan van Baarle to move on this winter because of their confidence in youngsters like Pidcock, Rodríguez, Ben Tulett, Ethan Hayter and Luke Plapp. They justifiably believe they already have a future Tour winner among their number, but 2023 is another story. It’s not hard to understand why, in the here and now, Jim Ratcliffe is seemingly so keen to sign Remco Evenepoel.

Other storylines to follow in 2023

• Paris-Roubaix winner Van Baarle may have left for Jumbo-Visma, but Ineos’ youthful Classics unit is worth following closely in 2023. Magnus Sheffield was a deserved Brabantse Pijl winner in 2022, while Ben Turner and Jhonatan Narváez made striking cameos on the cobbles. If Pidcock stays healthy, Ineos can expect big things in April.
  
  
• 2022 wasn’t smooth for Filippo Ganna, but he finished his year with an epochal UCI Hour Record and a new world record in the individual pursuit to boot. It remains to be seen if his gifts as a rouleur can be more fully applied to the Classics or even to the Grand Tours, but it should be entertaining to watch him figure that out. Look for him at Paris-Roubaix and a time trial-laden Giro.
  
  
• Pidcock understandably draws the eye, but Ineos have another dextrous young talent in Ethan Hayter, who toggles between sprinting, time trialling and climbing with striking ease. The 24-year-old has the weapons to win just about any kind of bike race, a priceless commodity in the current era.