Ineos changes owners and bets on the versatile Tom Piddock

The British professional cycling team INEOS Grenadiers, which in years gone by was called Sky or Ineos, has a long tradition and a successful history. Now it has bet on the versatile Tom Piddock.

Chris Foome has won the Tour de France four times in his colours, while Bradley Wiggins, Welshman Geraint Thomas and Egan Bernal have also won the world’s most famous stage race in Ineos colours. The Colombian rider also won the Giro d’Italia two years ago in the colours of INEOS Grenadiers.

But last year INEOS did not win any of the big, so-called Grand Tours – Tour de France, Giro d’Italia or Vuelta! And so the team is undergoing significant changes.

Steve Cummings has been appointed as the new Race Director, Scott Drawer is the new Performance Director of the team and John Allert becomes the Managing Director of the British WorldTour team. Former Spanish Movistar rider Imanol Erviti has also joined the team as directeur sportif.

Drawer worked as Head of Performance Hub at Sky and Ineos Grenadiers between 2016 and 2018 and has twenty-five years’ experience in high-performance sport. He joins Ineos from private school Millfield, where he was director of sport, and is likely to focus on finding and managing the marginal gains that once helped the team dominate the Grand Tours.

“Ineos Grenadiers is entering a new phase of development, we have big goals for the future again and I can’t wait to be part of the team. This is a high-performance led team with innovation at its heart and I look forward to working with a group that is so focused on excellence. We are absolutely focused on getting back to the top of the podium,” Cycling News published the words of John Alert.

“We have an impressive depth of experience combined with an exciting mix of young talented riders on this team, all complemented by a first class group of staff. We will give absolutely everything to achieve our goals. I can’t wait for the new season to start, ” added the former Tour de France stage winner.

As CEO, Allert will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of Ineos Grenadiers. The overhaul of the Ineos senior management team comes after the departure of John Ellingworth, owner of a major medical concern operating in the UK and Australia, from the INES team.

The fifty-one-year-old Englishman has been part of the team since its inception as Team Sky in 2009 after working with Brailsford at British Cycling. Tensions between Eward Brailsford, a media entrepreneur, and Ellingworth reportedly arose during the summer when Ineos Grenadiers tried unsuccessfully to recruit twenty-three-year-old talented Belgian cyclist Remco Evenepoel after Team INEOS again needed a leader for the Tour de France.

Evenepoel eventually decided to stay with Soudal-QuickStep for 2024, as the failed merger with Jumbo-Visma and Ineos Grenadiers confirmed that he would not have a clear number one position in the British team and could easily become a domestique instead of a leader! INEOS has a strong team anyway, with Geraint Thomas, Carlos Rodriguez and Tom Pidcock as excellent climbers, cyclo-crossers and team leaders.

After all, before the season INEOS could afford to dismiss Tao Geoghegan Hart (winner of the 2020 Italian Giro), Ben Tulett, Pavel Sivakov and Luke Plapp.

British WorldTour team INEOS Grenadiers has won seven editions of the Tour de France, as well as the Giro d’Italia three times, the Vuelta a España twice and three of the five major one-off monuments – Paris-Roubaix, Milan-Sanremo and Liège-Bastogne-Lutych. However, the rise of Thaddeus Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates), Jonas Vingegaard and Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma) since 2020 has influenced Ineos Grenadiers to no longer have such a good position in the Grand Tours and other big races.

And the goal of the new management of INEOS Grenadiers? To win the Tour de France again! Twenty-four year old Leeds, England native, excellent track racer, three-time world cyclocross champion and Tokyo Olympic mountain bike champion Tom Piddock should be the team leader. So, like all the current top riders, he’s a versatile cyclist first and foremost. But he lacks significant success on the road. And that’s what winning the Tour de France would be!

Source: Cycling News, UCI