{"id":445516,"date":"2026-02-25T22:08:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T22:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/445516\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T22:08:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T22:08:14","slug":"the-search-for-success-continues-at-ineos-grenadiers-just-dont-ask-about-jim-ratcliffes-colonised-by-immigrants-comments-cycling-news-bike-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/445516\/","title":{"rendered":"The search for success continues at Ineos Grenadiers… just don’t ask about Jim Ratcliffe’s ‘colonised by immigrants’ comments – Cycling News | Bike Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cI\u2019ve done interviews in worse places,\u201d John Allert remarks as he, a member of Ineos Grenadiers staff and myself squeeze through a door at the back of Pinarello\u2019s rather bling Regent Street store, clamber over a party\u2019s worth of bags and coats, and contort ourselves onto the sole Dogma-sized patch of quiet floorspace in the building.<\/p>\n

On the other side of the glass from our very cosy bike fit studio-turned-cloakroom-turned-interview perch is a sea of shiny carbon bikes worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, and just as many merry drinkers trying above all else to avoid knocking said bikes over in a crash of carbon and canap\u00e9s. Who said cycling\u2019s a rich person\u2019s sport?<\/p>\n

The event is to celebrate Pinarello\u2019s London store reopening after a couple of months of refurbishment and the assembled masses, whose baggage and extras we\u2019re now balanced precariously on top of, include CEO Fausto Pinarello, figures from across the brand\u2019s two sponsored pro teams Ineos Grenadiers and Pinarello-Q36.5, Irish cycling royalty in Sean Kelly and Sam Bennett, and, I\u2019m told, several select (and presumably very deep-pocketed) customers.<\/p>\n

\"PinarelloPinarello London store (Image Credit: Pinarello)<\/p>\n

Back on our snugly huddled-up side of the glass, Ineos Grenadiers CEO Allert runs me through where cycling\u2019s most famous team sits going into the 2026 season. Allert\u2019s background is in sports marketing, previously at McLaren where he worked on the brand\u2019s Formula 1 team and led its expansion into cycling as Bahrain McLaren, the team now known as Bahrain Victorious, before in 2023 he joined Ineos Grenadiers as managing director and more recently as the big boss.<\/p>\n

It has been no secret the past few years have focused on attempting to turn around the fortunes of one of cycling\u2019s superteams. The Grand Tours dried up following the Sky surplus of the 2010s, Egan Bernal\u2019s 2021 Giro the last three-week GC win to talk of.<\/p>\n

\"EganEgan Bernal and Geraint Thomas, 2019 Tour de France (Image Credit: Alex Broadway\/SWpix.com)<\/p>\n

It will be five years this May since the team last won a Grand Tour and this summer\u2019s Tour will bring up the seven-year anniversary of Bernal\u2019s Tour victory which, at the time, looked the first of many. Seven years without a yellow jersey would have seemed scarcely believable back in 2019, after all, of the eight preceding years, seven had brought seven Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es champagne photos.<\/p>\n

However, Allert is convinced there are signs of progress, not least in the seven race wins amassed already this season. For context, last season it took until the end of March to reach that tally, the year before win number seven did not arrive until the Giro d\u2019Italia in May.<\/p>\n

\"20262026 Tour Down Under Sam Welsford, Ineos Grenadiers, wins Stage 3. (Image Credit: Zac WiLLIAMS SWpix.com)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s well-documented that we\u2019ve put a lot of effort, time and investment in kind of resetting the team for a completely new chapter,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s long since started now. We\u2019re on a new journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wins in Algarve, Australia and Provence may not be Monuments and Grand Tour stages but Allert is confident the results \u201cspeak for themselves\u201d, even if it is \u201cearly, early days\u201d. One thing he doesn\u2019t seem to care for is any suggestion that the team\u2019s more illustrious past may see the current generation held, fairly or unfairly by fans, to higher standards than riders on other teams.<\/p>\n

\"gobik-x-ineosshooting9.jpg\"\/gobik-x-ineosshooting9.jpg (Image Credit: Gobik)<\/p>\n

\u201cI would much rather have a heritage that people talk about as being impressive and dynamic, moving the sport on than not have that at all. So I actually see it as a positive. We\u2019ve got a lot of people still in the team from that era. There is a lot of knowledge as a result of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s also an important cultural reference point for us too. It gives us a lot of pride. It\u2019s still a magnet for riders. You saw recently Oscar [Onley] joining the team and the photos of him as a kid wearing that jersey. I think we all wear that with pride and we embrace it. It\u2019s not a negative for us. It\u2019s something that we\u2019re very proud of, but we\u2019re desperately trying to build the new chapter and be as equally proud of the new chapter as we are of the old.<\/p>\n

\"gobik-x-ineosshooting10r.jpg\"\/gobik-x-ineosshooting10r.jpg (Image Credit: Ineos Grenadiers)<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re ambitious but we\u2019re pragmatic. There are obviously still some very dominant riders out there that you need to beat if you want to win at the top level. We\u2019re doing everything to set our stall out and make sure that we\u2019re as well placed to do that as anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

As touched upon above, the winter brought the signings of Oscar Onley and K\u00e9vin Vauquelin, two riders who made their debut for the team finishing fourth and fifth respectively at Volta ao Algarve last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re very confident in the guys that we\u2019ve brought into the team,\u201d Allert said. \u201cThey love being in the team. The group has gelled really quickly. I\u2019m just excited to see what they\u2019re going to bring this year and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also praise for Dave Brailsford whose brief foray into the unforgiving world of football ended last summer with a return to a renewed focus on cycling matters at Ineos.<\/p>\n

\"SirSir Dave Brailsford with Geraint Thomas, 2018 Tour de France (Image Credit: SWpix.com)<\/p>\n

Calling Brailsford \u201cthe architect\u201d to the legacy we discussed earlier, Allert says the return \u201chas been great\u201d for the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s somebody who commands respect for the results that he\u2019s achieved and the way he\u2019s gone about achieving them,\u201d Allert explains. \u201cI love working with him, he\u2019s funny in a way that people may not appreciate. He\u2019s a fun guy, he\u2019s got a great sense of humour, he\u2019s very warm. I don\u2019t feel like saying he\u2019s back in the team because, to be fair, he never fully left the team. But yeah, I think he\u2019s a great asset.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"20262026 Ineos Grenadiers kit launch (Image Credit: Ineos Grenadiers)<\/p>\n

Allert\u2019s positivity continues to those controversial white shorts (or are they more \u2018washed too many times grey\u2019?) that had cycling fans covering their eyes during the off-season. Perhaps this is where the Ineos Grenadiers\u2019 CEO\u2019s marketing background can\u2019t help but pull a turn.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a fan of the shorts,\u201d he smiles. \u201cThe shorts are part of a kit that has a lot of good reason behind it. They reflect the aesthetic of where amateur cycling is. We\u2019ve got an amazing relationship with Gobik who has an incredibly sophisticated design aesthetic and we wear them with pride.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s the marketing professional.<\/p>\n

One area where there\u2019s not going to be any discussion is the story that hit the front pages of almost every newspaper here in the UK the other week, Ineos owner and petrochemicals billionaire Jim Ratcliffe\u2019s immigration comments.<\/p>\n

\"JimJim Ratcliffe (Image Credit: SWpix.com\/Simon Wilkinson)<\/p>\n

Ratcliffe\u2019s claim that Britain has been \u201ccolonised by immigrants\u201d sparked calls for an apology by the Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the Ineos boss later following up by saying he was sorry if his \u201cchoice of language has offended some people in the UK and Europe\u201d.<\/p>\n

When I bring up the situation with Allert, and ask if it\u2019s made life more difficult to run an international cycling team with riders from around the world, it is immediately clear this is one subject no amount of marketing expertise will see him touch. It\u2019s an issue for Ineos corporate, he tells me, the follow-up receiving the same reply.<\/p>\n

You can probably work out where this is going by now but, as it was a couple of weeks ago, Ineos Grenadiers\u2019 corporate communications department\u2019s stance also remains one of silence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI\u2019ve done interviews in worse places,\u201d John Allert remarks as he, a member of Ineos Grenadiers staff and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-445516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}