Unbelievable! Cycling stable gets a billion dollars like Manchester United

The boss of the petrochemical firm Ineos, Jim Ratcliffe, has decided to invest a billion US dollars in Manchester United football club. He told a British newspaper that it is an investment that will pay off in the long run.

In a football big club, this investment is essentially a drop in the ocean. Jim Ratcliffe got twenty-five per cent in Manchester United for it. There was consternation in the cycling worldtour stable of Ineos Grenadiers when the patrons of the cycling stable plunged into football.

The former Tour de France-winning team suddenly began to fear it faced a more uncertain future when Ratcliffe, chairman of the petrochemical group Ineos, put a billion dollars into Manchester United. And indeed it has been confirmed that Ratcliffe invested approximately £1 billion ($1.270 billion) to acquire 25 percent of both the A and B shares of Manchester United Football Club and gain control of the football operations.

The multi-billionaire will also amass another $300 million in infrastructure for the Manchester team in the coming seasons.

Moreover, this news comes amid turbulent results for Tom Pidcock’s professional cycling team (England’s Tokyo Olympic mountain bike champion, junior world road cycling champion and three-time world cyclocross champion), Geraint Thomas (the first Welsh winner of the 2018 Tour de France) and Egan Bernal (the great Colombian climber – winner of the 2019 Tour de France and winner of the 2021 Giro d’Italia).

Moreover, the news that British philanthropist Ratcliffe is investing in football came at a time when sporting director and literal talisman of the Tour de France Rod Ellingworth has quit the Ineos cycling team. In addition, the British outfit has restructured its top management and CEO positions.

But there was good news for the Ineos cycling stable. Former team boss and marginal profit maker Dave Brailsford has also returned to day-to-day work at the cycling team after becoming sporting director of Ineos’ sports investment portfolio. In other good news, the UK’s The Guardian has reported that Brailsford will also take a prominent role in the Manchester United project.

Then came the best news. Jim Ratcliffe, who has an estimated net worth of around £30 billion (US$38 billion) and controls a portfolio of sports investments including the Nice and Lausanne football teams as well as the Ineos yachting team, has proved to be a consummate fan of road cycling. He also subscribed a billion US dollars to the Ineos Grenadiers cycling team.

The Ineos (formerly Sky) cycling stable won almost every major stage race in 2019. Thanks largely to the then phenomenal Chris Froome, the then Team Sky was on a winning streak in the middle of the last decade.

But Ineos Grenadiers’ last grand tour victory was recorded by the British team with Colombian Egan Bernal at the 2021 Giro d’Italia. The career of Welshman Geraint Thomas is slowly coming to an end. The team now has a number of young talents such as Magnus Sheffield, Josh Tarling and Carlos Rodríguez. Yet there are fears that Ratcliffe’s investment in Manchester United will lead to the seventy-one-year-old businessman devoting more time to a football team in serious need of a reboot.

Manchester United was once a team that beat virtually anyone in the English Premier League. But it was dethroned by rivals Manchester City thanks to money from the land of the sheikhs. The Red Devils are currently in the midst of a miserable 2023/24 season. “Our collective ambition is clear, we all want to get Manchester United back to where they belong, at the very top of English, European and world football,” Ratcliffe said.

Meanwhile, the Ineos Grenadiers cycling stable are working to groom Tom Pidcock into a future Tour de France winner. This was complicated by Tom’s recent injury at the Antwerp cyclo-cross. Despite this, the 24-year-old British Cycling Academy graduate remains Ineos’ best hope for any race.

He’s at the ideal age for big races, and a versatile cyclist to boot. Quite possibly, we may be witnessing some sort of long-distance battle between Ineos cyclists and Manchester United footballers for the favour of their benefactor. It’s worth a billion dollars!

Source: Velo OutsideOnline