THE WIDE OPEN TOUR

How will new-look Team Ineos cope without Froome?

The 2019 Tour de France will roll away from the Place Royale in Brussels with the fallout over Mark Cavendish’s non-selection by his Dimension Data team continuing to make headlines.

This year’s Grand Depart celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first overall victory by record stagewinner eddy Merckx, but Cavendish’s hopes of surpassing Merckx’s 34 stage wins were dashed by his team boss Doug Ryder, who opted not to select the Manx rider.

Now with Cavendish and Ryder’s relationship believed to be in free fall, rifts are appearing within the team.

Only four riders showed up for

the team’s official pre-Tour press conference, while Ryder cited a last-minute engagement and stayed away, as did Cavendish’s British team-mate Steve Cummings, who described the sprinter as a ‘legend.’

In the briefest of press conferences, only one rider, Reinardt Janse van Rensburg was willing to address Cavendish’s absence, describing it as ‘pretty sad for everybody.’

‘Cav is a legend of the sport,’ he said. ‘he worked hard to be here but unfortunately — in all sports — there are decisions that have to be made and the team made the decision.’

Across Brussels, Dave Brailsford’s riders, now starting their first Tour as Team Ineos, rather than Team Sky, put on a much more united front, even in the absence of Chris Froome, who has now returned from hospital to his home in Monaco as he continues his recovery from the injuries sustained after crashing in the Criterium du Dauphine last month.

‘he left hospital yesterday and transferred to home,’ revealed Brailsford. ‘That’s a big step. he’s managed to put his feet on the floor for the first time in a while.’

Brailsford added that some of his team-mates had visited Froome in hospital in the aftermath of his crash.

he said: ‘The guys think that he’s in remarkable spirits for the situation that he’s found himself in. he’s adjusted to it.’

Without Froome, it is defending champion Geraint Thomas, looking almost as lean as he did 12 months ago, who will lead the way for Ineos.

The Welshman appears to have won his battle for fitness after an autumn spent celebrating the success of last July.

In what has been called a coleadership with team-mate egan Bernal, Thomas will lead Ineos into a mountainous race that has been billed by the organisers as the ‘highest Tour in history,’ with more numerous and even higher mountains than a year ago.

That is also why Ineos will expect the hugely talented if inexperienced Colombian to step into the breach, if Thomas should falter. The 22-year-old has already won two major races this year in the World Tour — Paris-Nice and the Tour of Switzerland. The last rider to win the Swiss race and the Tour in the same year was Merckx himself in 1974.

But with Froome watching from the sidelines, there are plenty of other riders who see greater possibilities in this year’s race than ever before.

French duo Romain Bardet and Thibaut Pinot, British twins Simon and Adam Yates, plus former winner Vincenzo Nibali, lead the long list of contenders.

Nicolas Portal, Team Ineos sports director, accepted that Froome’s absence might lead to a more unpredictable race.

‘When you have Froome, you have a rider who has won six Grand Tours,’ he said. ‘It’s not just experience that he brings but also strength. The last four Grand Tours he rode, the worst finish was third in Paris last year.

‘Without Froome, our chances go down a little. But we still have a really good chance with Geraint and egan.

‘It will be interesting to see how the other teams react because they have to try to make the most of the chance.’