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Sean Kelly has said Ineos Grenadiers will come back
strong and it would be very unwise to write them off because of their poor
performance at the Tour de France.
“Egan Bernal is a young rider, he came into the Tour last
year in the shadow of Geraint Thomas and he won the race. But this year he came
in as team leader and that brings a lot more pressure; the focus is on you and
you are the sole leader, the defending champ; and that’s far more pressure,”
said Kelly.
While this year’s Tour is the first time since Bradley
Wiggins’s win in 2012 that the team has looked so poor on the race, Kelly said
they would be back.
And he believed with such a young roster of riders now, they could come back very strong for many years, though Jumbo Visma was clearly on the ascendency.
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“I think they can come back; they can refocus and
readjust after this,” Kelly said of Ineos Grenadiers.
“They have the riders to do that, to come back strong. They
just need a more normal year, if you like. But I think they’ll be back next
year to put in a very strong challenge to win the Tour again.
“I think with Bernal; it would be way, way too early to
start writing him off. And Carapaz as well; he’s proved last year he’s a top
three-week tour rider.
“But they’ve chopped and changed him (Carapaz) this year and that will have an impact on you. And he’s been on the deck a few times on the Tour. Ineos also have other riders who will step up in the next few years.”
Kelly - the former King of the Classics, World No 1,
Vuelta winner and four-time Tour de France green jersey winner – said from the
time Egan Bernal began to perform poorly he felt he must be sick or injured.
And he believed from late last week that the impact of that illness or injury on his Bernal’s performance may take a few days to become clear to the rider and his team, adding “even Bernal on a bad day” would have ridden much better last Friday and on Sunday’s stage.
“He went out so early on the climbs on Sunday; there was
still 20 to 25 riders on the group,” he said, adding even poor form would not
account for such a poor ride.
Kelly was speaking to stickybottle before Bernal withdraw
from the race on Wednesday morning but that decision not start stage 17, due to
a back injury spreading to other parts of Bernal’s body, had effectively
confirmed Kelly’s theory.
On the wider issue of the whole team’s poor performance,
Kelly said Ineos Grenadiers had been unlucky with crashes but that it had also
undergone a lot of changes, all at the same time, and that Covid19 had
complicated that change process underway in the team.
He believed the team was really missing Nicolas Portal,
its DS who died from cardiac issues back in March. A key figure in the team on
the performance side, Rod Ellingworth, had
left the team for Bahrain McLaren.
The absence of those two key figures was being digested
within the team at a time when Chris Froome was still on the way back from his
crash last year; and had decided to leave the team at the end of the year.
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Geraint Thomas had also been off form for a period before the Tour and a number of new riders had been signed and were bedding it.
All of these changes, Kelly noted, then coincided with
the Covid19 period. And the impact of the pandemic meant the Ineos Grenadiers
usual system of having its riders in lengthy training and altitude camps had
been very significantly undermined. He also said the crashes on the Tour had
not helped.
“Sivakov’s crashes in stage 1; that was a really bad blow
for the team because he crashed so heavily; it was touch and go whether he was
going to stay in the race and then he really struggled after that,” Kelly said.
“Carapaz has also been on the deck a few times. And let’s
not forget, he was aiming for the Giro and then they switch him to the Tour.
“So he would have been gearing his training very
specifically for the Giro; and these riders do that so specifically they can
judge it to come good the week of a race or the week before. So changing him
from the Giro to the Tour was a big change.”
Kelly said there were constant news stories about Carapaz
riding 300km training spins when he was back home during the lock-down.
“I don’t know what that was about; that’s something that’s a bit mad for me. I don’t know why they have to do that kind of training.”
Kelly did not believe the absence of racing due to the
lock-down was a big issue for Ineos Grenadiers because it was a team that
prepared for racing with training rather than by racing.
But he believed the lock-down very significantly impacted
the team’s camps and that, for him, was the big issue for the drop in
performance at the Tour.
“When they were eventually able to do those camps before
the Tour, they may have done too much; taken too much training on board so
close to the race and it hasn’t worked out,” he added.
“When you go on a training camp with a team like Ineos, with
the quality of the riders they have and the number of those riders they have; that
really brings you on, and they all bring each other on.
“I wouldn’t underestimate that; these great bike riders together every day and some of the training riders would be as hard, and better quality, than a lot of the racing simply because there is so much talent there.”
He added Nicolas Portal was a big part of the team, in
terms of both its training and racing effort, and he felt his absence was being
felt in a very significant way inside Ineos Grenadiers.
Asked who was going to win the Tour de France, Kelly said
his pre-race favourite was Egan Bernal, though obviously his challenge faded at
the weekend.
And now that Primoz Roglic (Jumbo Visma) and Tadej
Pogačar (UAE-Team Emirates) were 1st and 2nd overall going into today’s stage
17, Kelly believed Roglic would take overall victory.
He said at times each of the Slovenians had looked
stronger than the other but as Roglic had a lead 40 seconds he felt he would
win, though he added he could not be certain of that.
On balance, however, Kelly believed Roglic may prove more
consistent over the coming stages as Pogacar had very little top end pro racing
in his legs as he was so young.
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