Bradley Wiggins has said while Jumbo Visma has performed better than Team Ineos of late, the British team may be racing fatigued, which would be resolved when the riders tapered for the Tour de France.
The 2012 Tour winner made his comments after Primoz
Roglic (Jumbo Visma) won two stages out of three and the overall at the Tour de
l’Ain in France last weekend.
During the hardest two stages on Saturday and Sunday Egan
Bernal was isolated in the select group as the lone Team Ineos rider when Jumbo
Visma were still strong enough to have four riders left in the group.
The Dutch team has also won Strade Bianche and
Milan-Sanremo with Wout van Aert, who will be part of its Tour de France effort
later this month.
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“Dutch cycling at the moment… Dutch cycling in terms of
Jumbo Visma; are they better than Team Ineos as an all-round team who have held
that mantle for so long?” Wiggins pondered.
“They might not win everything, but they place riders in
Grand Tours with more consistency, they win these one-day races, the team time
trial in the Tour last year.”
Wiggins said while Team Ineos “get the job done” some of
its riders were more anonymous now, citing specifically Michał Kwiatkowski, the
winner of Milan-Sanremo in 2017 who was 15th in the race on Saturday.
“They (Jumbo Visma) seem to have riders everywhere, in
every kind of race; they’ve really come to the fore now,” he said.
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However, he explained Team Ineos may have significant
adjusting to do before the Tour which may explain the apparent difference in
levels between both teams in the past few weeks.
At the Tour de l’Ain, Team Ineos had Chris Froome, Egan
Bernal and Geraint Thomas in the same team for the first time since the 2018
Tour de France.
While Bernal was 2nd overall, Thomas and Froome were a
long way off their best and the often seen Team Ineos dominance in stage racing
was not in evidence.
However, Wiggins said Team Ineos had recently done a big block of training and because of that, and because of the lock-down and abnormal season, different teams and riders would be racing under different levels of fatigue as they build towards the Tour de France.
“You need two weeks to soak up that work and see the benefit of that,” he said of Team Ineos having recently done an altitude camp and then apparently performed below Jumbo Visma’s level.
“Bear in mind, we’re three weeks away from the Tour now
and the business end of the Tour is five weeks away. So you don’t want to be
backing off (training) yet; there’s still time to get improvements, fitness
improvements.”
This was especially the case for Chris Froome as he had
so much ground to make up; Wiggins saying Froome should definitely be picked for
the Tour.
“Froome will improve with every race he does because of
where he’s come from; intensive care, he was in critical condition last year
due to his accident.”
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