Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos Grenadiers will start the 2024 Tour de France much as they have other recent Grand Tours: hoping for the best from their nominated team leaders, but ready to call for backup from Geraint Thomas and Tom Pidcock, if needed.
With the Giro d’Italia winner Tadej Pogacar seemingly in invincible form, the years have long gone when, as Team Sky, the British squad started the world’s biggest bike race as the team to beat.
Thomas said: “‘Pog’ is obviously a bigger favourite than us. We’re not going to ride like Team Sky. We’re not going to be one train on the front.”
This year Grenadiers will be led by the 2019 Tour winner Egan Bernal, of Colombia, and Spain’s Carlos Rodríguez, fifth overall in Paris in 2023. Thomas, Tour winner in 2018 and a consistent podium finisher in Grand Tours since then, is the team’s wildcard – willing to scrap with the pre-race favourites Jonas Vingegaard, the defending champion, and Pogacar, if needed.
“I’m super excited about it,” said Thomas, who finished third overall in the Giro in May. “We’ve got a strong team. As long as we are all pulling in the same direction, which I’m confident we will be. Of course, there will be bumps in the road, but we’re all clear about what we are coming to try to achieve.”
Rodríguez, who won the mountain stage to Morzine last year when making his Tour debut, and Bernal, continuing to make significant progress as he comes back from a life‑threatening crash in January 2022, are their protected riders.
Pidcock, meanwhile, who only last weekend won two mountain bike World Cup races, will again be asked to suppress his own ambitions. “I want to try and win stages,” he said. “I don’t want to lose time on general classification for the sake of it, but if I need to do that to achieve those goals of winning stages, then I will.”
The 24-year-old, winner on Alpe d’Huez in 2022, will again be deployed largely as a support rider, even if that role has not always been to his liking.
“Obviously Egan and Carlos and Geraint are much more experienced in the general classification than me,” he said. “We can’t really go with four guys.”
All of this is set against the backdrop of growing rumours of key exits, echoing the talent exodus of 2023, with both Pidcock and fellow Olympian Josh Tarling now thought to be considering their futures. Whether the British team’s multi-leader strategy will be enough to prevent another demolition of his rivals by Pogacar, Tour champion in 2020 and 2021, is a moot point.
Pogacar, who won the Giro by almost 10 minutes, said on Wednesday that he has “never felt so good on the bike”, a statement that will be mortifying for the Slovenian’s rivals.
Speaking on the UAE Team Emirates website, Pogacar said: “I’ve made a step forward since the Giro, and my shape is even better than what I expected. I’ve tested my legs a little bit and, to be honest, I have never felt so good on the bike.”
