{"id":563671,"date":"2026-07-28T14:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T14:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/563671\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T14:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T14:52:08","slug":"geraint-thomas-and-rebranded-ineos-face-hard-truths-after-tour-de-france-misery-team-ineos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/563671\/","title":{"rendered":"Geraint Thomas and rebranded Ineos face hard truths after Tour de France misery | Team Ineos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crashes, punctures and injuries ensured that the 2026 Tour de France campaign was one of the worst ever for the beleaguered Netcompany Ineos team. From the first stage on, when Dave Brailsford\u2019s team came close to winning the team time trial in Montjuic, the 2026 Tour was, in the words of their director of racing, Geraint Thomas<\/a>, \u201ctough going\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m happy to not be racing any more, because I suffered way too much,\u201d said Thomas, who has taken Brailsford\u2019s place as the team\u2019s frontman. \u201cBut it\u2019s good to still be involved in the nitty-gritty of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a baptism of fire for Thomas in his first Tour managing his riders, as he had to hastily reimagine his lineup after Oscar Onley, the leader, was ruled out by injury. That led to a rapid realignment of the team\u2019s goals.<\/p>\n

The optimism fuelled by Ineos\u2019s acquisition of Onley, who finished fourth overall in 2025, and the arrival of a new co-sponsor, Netcompany, has dissipated quickly. The Scot was injured in June and forced to miss the Tour, which scuppered Thomas\u2019s best-laid plans.<\/p>\n

Geraint Thomas faced a lot of questions during the Tour de France but Ineos struggled for answers. Photograph: Stefano Sirotti\/Alamy<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were there or thereabouts,\u201d Thomas said of his riders. \u201cThe team time trial everyone wanted to win and believed we could win. We were close, and we\u2019ve been there, but just not quite clicked.\u201d<\/p>\n

More galling, perhaps, were the serial punctures and the sight of Remco Evenepoel, of the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team, riding to his best-ever Tour finish in second place. The Olympic road race and time-trial champion, a friend of Thomas, had long been connected to a move to Brailsford\u2019s team but the deal for him to join fell through.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith all the changes going on in that team, there were delays and I couldn\u2019t really wait any more,\u201d Evenepoel said last winter, but added: \u201cIt was close to being done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, Ineos opted to sign Onley, but his 2026 season has never really got started. With the Tour over, his next goal is likely to be the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a.<\/p>\n

Without Onley as a podium contender, the emphasis shifted and Egan Bernal, the Tour winner in 2019, was brought in to boost the team\u2019s climbing skills. The French signing Kevin Vauquelin failed to repeat the successes of the previous summer, leaving Thomas and his riders targeting stage wins. But the chances of achieving them were reduced by the domination of Tadej Pogacar and his UAE Emirates team, allied to a tougher course and higher average speeds.<\/p>\n

Emmanuel Macron, France\u2019s president, speaking to Ineos\u2019s French cyclist Kevin Vauquelin after stage six, was a rare high point. Photograph: Guillaume Horcajuelo\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Thomas admitted that there had been \u201ca lot of learning on the job\u201d for him. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to talk about [winning] stages but there are so few anyway, that it is tough. But it\u2019s the Tour, it\u2019s not supposed to be easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time Thomas and his riders got to the foot of the double-header of finishes on Alpe d\u2019Huez, their race was about survival. \u201cWithout being defeatist, you\u2019re not exactly racing \u2018Pog\u2019 on days like that,\u201d the 2018 Tour winner said. \u201cRacing evolves and you need to adapt with it. Everyone\u2019s been looking for opportunities because they\u2019re few and far between.\u201d<\/p>\n

A decade ago, as Team Sky, Chris Froome led the team to an emphatic overall win in Paris, while British riders, spearheaded by Mark Cavendish, took seven stage wins. That success now seems a different era, with Froome retired, record climbing speeds being set on a regular basis and Pogacar dominating almost every race he starts.<\/p>\n

Of the Slovene, Thomas agreed that challenging the five-time winner was a daunting task. \u201cI think everyone, if they\u2019re realistic, knew that he was on another level. It was only Jonas [Vingegaard] who really believed he could do it.<\/p>\n

\u201cRacing is all mental, it\u2019s all in the head. If you go off it, it\u2019s so hard to switch it back on. As soon as you\u2019re not doing everything right, you lose that couple of per cent. Everyone is so good now that you can\u2019t afford to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Crashes, punctures and injuries ensured that the 2026 Tour de France campaign was one of the worst ever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-563671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}