Geraint Thomas: Ineos Grenadiers has been in transition for a couple of years

For a team that came into the Vuelta a España with ambitions of overall success, the last few weeks have been a bumpy experience for Ineos Grenadiers.

Two riders have been forced out of the race through injury, Geraint Thomas has crashed several times, and only Filippo Ganna has tasted success with a stage in the individual time trial.

At the same time, Ineos’ main rivals have demonstrated just how far they are ahead of the British team on current form and results, with the Welshman telling the media that his squad remain in transition as they attempt to plot the road back to the top of the sport.

To give Thomas his credit, he has almost single-handedly kept Ineos Grenadiers within striking distance at Grand Tours for the last two years, finishing third in the 2022 Tour de France then moving up a step on the podium at this year’s Giro d’Italia.

The Vuelta a España, however, has shown the chasm between Ineos Grenadiers and two teams they used to dominate over three weeks. Jumbo-Visma look set to march into Madrid sitting first, second and third overall, while UAE Team Emirates have gallantly but unsuccessfully thrown everything at their Dutch rivals.

Ineos on the other hand do not have a single rider within an hour of Sepp Kuss’s red jersey, and although bad luck has certainly played a part in the British team’s current Vuelta stock, there’s no denying that the team that once set the standard for Grand Tour racing are playing catch-up.

“For a start we were dominant for more or less a decade from 2012 to 2019 when we were constantly winning the Tour and on podiums. Naturally in sport there’s a changing of the guard. For us as a team, I still believe we’re good but Jumbo-Visma and UAE have overtaken us, certainly when Tadej Pogačar is riding in front of us,” Thomas said during his rest day press conference on Monday.

It’s been a bruising Vuelta for the Welshman, who has crashed multiple times throughout the race. Ineos lost two of their best climbers in the first week too, and Egan Bernal is still not the competitive force he once was following his life threatening crash from 2022. Jumbo-Visma, meanwhile, march on and look destined to become the first men’s team to win all three Grand Tours in a single season - a feat not even Sky or Ineos managed.

“I just think that with dominance a lot of it is down to morale and confidence in the team. Speaking from personal experience, you obviously need the leader to win but when you have strong leadership then everyone else can go up a level with that,” Thomas said.

“You can sense that here with the way the domestiques are going. Gesink has found his legs of old and Van Baarle and Valter, they’re all riding really well and it’s a snowball effect. It’s the opposite for us in this race. It started really badly losing De Plus and then it was one thing after the next. With Jumbo, they’ve just moved the game on. We’re doing everything that we can.”

Despite the lull at the Vuelta and in recent times, Thomas believes that the team he has called home for the majority of his career can still produce high quality results, and that with time, they can return to a competitive footing.

Carlos Rodríguez was fifth in the Tour de France this year - despite a heavy fall - and is set to sign a contract extension with the team. Thomas is also close to announcing a new Ineos deal of his own. The ambition within the core group of riders doesn’t appear to have dimmed in the slightest.

“We’re still trying to be positive and we can either laugh or cry so we try to make light of it,” Thomas said of his team’s Vuelta luck. “We’ve got a few memes in our group about how it’s going. It’s not been a total disaster. If you look at Carlos, he was fighting for the podium in the Tour and then he had that crash. He could have been fourth, ended up fifth but he’s a young guy who joined the team when he was 19. That’s a real success story. I was 15 seconds away from winning the Giro. We’re a young team and it’s been a bit of a team in transition for the last couple of years, for a number of reasons really," he said.

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