Ineos riders’ dominance under threat at Tour de France
NICE — The dominant force at the Tour de France for most of the last decade, the Ineos team of defending champion Egan Bernal is seeing its supremacy challenged, and this year’s race could well be the one marking a major shift of power in cycling.
Since Bradley Wiggins’ triumph at the marquee event back in 2012, the British outfit has never been under such a threat as it is on the starting line in the Riviera city of Nice, where the three-week race is set to start Saturday under the cloud of COVID-19.
The pandemic has forced the Tour to move to the end of the summer holidays and the few races held prior to the event strongly suggest that Dutch team Jumbo-Visma is ready to replace Ineos as the top Grand Tour squad.
But a changing of the guard this summer is far from guaranteed. The uncertainty brought on by the virus and the steady rise of cases in France in recent weeks mean there is a real risk the race could be stopped short if the situation deteriorates further or if the peloton is badly hit
by positive results.
“We don’t know, nobody knows, if we’re going to reach Paris,” Ineos manager Dave Brailsford said on Friday. “To be fair, if it comes to a point where it’s detrimental to the riders and teams, people need to take that on board as well. We need to be responsible and reasonable in our approach.”
Under the COVID-19 exclusion rules issued by cycling’s governing body, teams could be excluded from the race if two of their riders test positive in the space of seven days.
“It’s a first miracle that we are able to start this race, but we want a second miracle to happen, which is the Tour de France to arrive in Paris,” UCI president
David Lappartient said. “The goal is really to reach Paris.”
Led by the 2019 Spanish Vuelta winner Primoz Roglic and 2018 Tour de France runner-up Tom Dumoulin, Jumbo-Visma arrived at the Tour with a roster capable of controlling the race in the mountains, an essential element that was a hallmark of the Ineos teams in previous years.
Roglic, a former ski jumper from Slovenia, has all the qualities required to win this mountainous edition of the Tour that will take the peloton over France’s five mountain ranges. A climber with great downhill abilities, he would be the overwhelming favorite if not for his crash at the Criterium du Dauphine while leading the race earlier this month.
Roglic says he has fully recovered and insists Dumoulin is
also in great shape.
“The thing is I’m here and I’m at the start. That’s really good news and it’s nice to be here. I’m also ready. We start on Saturday and I’ll just try to do my best and we’ll see how it goes,” he said. “Looking to Tom, I think he’s made big steps and he’s ready to be at his best here. It’s a lot nicer now to have such a strong guy in the team and we’ll try and do the best that we can.”
When organizers unveiled
the route for the 2020 edition in October, there was little doubt the 3,484-kilometre (2,165mile) trek would be an ideal setting for Bernal and his experienced teammates including previous winners Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas.
But the pair of former champions has been axed from the Ineos team following under-par performances at preparation races after the season resumed in early August.