With just three days left of the Tour de France, Ineos Grenadiers are running out of time to rescue their race. Not only are they one of the ten teams still without a stage win, but in the GC race, their leader, Carlos Rodríguez, languishes in sixth place, a distant 8:21 from the podium. Even by the lowered standards since their dominant 2010s heyday, for a team with their budget, history and expectations, that’s a subpar return.
Today, Michał Kwiatkowski came the closest any of their riders have come to winning a stage. The Pole seemed to have used his experience and nous to have masterminded a perfect situation, going all in with an attack at just the right moment over the top of the final climb of the day, the Côte des Demoiselles Coiffées, 40km from the finish. When he was joined by Victor Campenaerts (Lotto-Dstny) and Mattéo Vercher (TotalEnergies) on the subsequent descent, he had the support he needed to stay clear from the rest of the chasers while also being, on paper at least, the fastest sprinter.
But he was surprised at the finish, as Campenaerts unleashed a hitherto undemonstrated finishing kick to take the victory in the three-up finish. Even Vercher got the better of him, meaning Kwiatkowski had to settle for third place and Ineos Grenadiers another missed opportunity.
The only other time the team had come this close to a stage victory was at the end of week one, on the day of the gravel roads. On that occasion, Tom Pidcock was edged into second place by Anthony Turgis (TotalEnergies) in a sprint contested by the six remaining riders from the break of the day.
The very fact they are left scrambling in the final week shows how far the team has fallen since their run of seven overall victories in eight years between 2012 and 2019. Whereas in those years, they exercised almost complete control over the Tour, shaping the race in their image to the extent that victory rarely looked anything other than inevitable, now, they aren’t even counted among the top contenders for the yellow jersey. They’ve not just been caught by Visma-Lease a Bike and UAE Team Emirates but have been left for dust by them and are left playing catch-up with their GC leaders nowhere near the level of Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard. Consequently, they instead find themselves resorting to breakaways and doing battle with lower-tier teams like Lotto-Dstny and TotalEnergies for stage wins.
Rather than show signs of recovery this year, Ineos appears to be falling further behind. In all of the Tours since their last yellow jersey win in 2019, they have at least partially redeemed their race with either stage wins (2020 and 2023), a podium finish (2021), or both (2022). Those podium finishes for Richard Carapaz and Geraint Thomas, respectively, both behind the mighty duo of Pogačar and Vingegaard, showed how, even if they were behind Visma-Lease a Bike and UAE Team Emirates in the new GC hierarchy, Ineos at least could say they remained the best of the rest.
But this year, even a podium finish is looking very unlikely. Carlos Rodríguez is at present so far adrift from the top three that he requires at least one of Pogačar, Vingegaard or Remco Evenepoel (Soudal–Quick-Step) to collapse significantly, as well as needing to overtake both João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates) and Mikel Landa (Soudal–Quick-Step), currently both ahead of him in fourth and fifth, respectively. Currently, Rodríguez seems to have momentum going against him, having lost time to all of those riders on the last summit finish at Plateau de Beille last weekend. At this rate, even Evenepoel and Landa’s Soudal–Quick-Step team can be said to have overtaken Ineos Grenadiers as a GC force.
Defeat for Kwiatkowski today is also a chastening blow, as in their post-dominance era Tours, they have been able to rely on him to turn their fortunes around. In the disastrous 2020 campaign, when defending champion Egan Bernal pulled out of the race injured, Kwiatkowski was the man who rescued their race with a stage win. And did so in spectacular, PR-friendly fashion, too, riding away with then-teammate Richard Carapaz to give the team a photogenic finish of both crossing the line together arm-in-arm. Then, last year, he held off a rampaging Tadej Pogačar to take stage victory atop the Grand Colombier in the second week, showing outstanding climbing form and what he described as “probably the best legs I ever had in my life.”
Kwiatkowski’s new role as a Tour de France stage-hunter is the latest development in a career that has progressed through several rebrands. Having started as a prodigiously talented young all-rounder riding for Quick-Step, who, finishing eleventh-place on Tour debut in 2013 at the age of just 23, initially showed promise as a potential GC rider, the Pole then took one-day races by storm, winning the world championships and Strade Bianche in 2014 and Amstel Gold in 2015. Upon signing for Ineos Grenadiers the following year, he then became arguably the world’s greatest super-domestique, offering peerless support first to Chris Froome, then Geraint Thomas, then Egan Bernal, distinguished by his ability to ride in all kinds of terrain. Even now, as he helps his team another way by targeting stage wins, you sense he remains as selfless as ever, motivated as much by his desire to help his team as he is by personal glory.
If even the perennially reliable Kwiatkowski can’t save them this Tour de France, then who can, with only two massive mountain stages in the Alps and the time trial in Nice to come? Rodríguez remains their strongest climber, but he’s caught between a rock and a hard place; too far away from the podium to realistically challenge for it, but also too close to be given much leeway in the break. Perhaps Egan Bernal can get fit again, and try his luck from the break? Or maybe Kwiatkowski isn’t done yet, and can find the climbing legs that saw him win on Grand Colombier last year? The odds look against them, but Ineos need to find a rabbit to pull out of the hat to save their Tour de France.
