'The Giro is something different' - Egan Bernal's defiant pursuit of old glories

Egan Bernal preferred to let his racing do the talking for much of the Tour of the Alps. After helping teammate Thymen Arensman to second place at Val Martello, he smilingly declined the entreaties of a group of journalists, putting his thumb to his chin to signal his fatigue before freewheeling off towards the Ineos bus.

He repeated the same gesture in Arco a day later after sprinting to third place behind Tom Pidcock, but the polite protestations were beginning to wear a little thin as the week drew on. Bernal might have preferred to downplay them, but his performances in the Alps simply couldn’t be ignored.

Although Bernal couldn’t quite follow eventual winner Giulio Pellizzari (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) over the climb of Cologna di Sopra on the final stage, he was very clearly the best of the rest behind him. Bernal duly won the sprint from the three-man chasing group in Bolzano to seal second place overall and to underscore his credentials ahead of his return to the Giro d’Italia.

“To be honest, I didn’t have any expectations, so I was prepared for everything – whether that was to be in the gruppetto or to be fighting for the GC,” Bernal told media including Domestique on the morning of the final stage. 

“I was a lot of days off the bike so far this year, and I’ve had a lot of time without racing. In the previous six months, I’d only raced three days, so anything could have happened.”

Bernal had started 2026 on a high note, retaining his Colombian national title in his home city of Zipaquirá. Yet even there, amid the acclaim of his own people, Bernal had his mind fixed firmly on goals further afield, acknowledging that the real tests of the new campaign would come when he disembarked in Europe.

Instead, the first race on the Old Continent brought only old woes. Bernal placed seventh at the Faun-Ardèche Classic, but a knee injury would nag at him in the days that followed. He would eventually spend three weeks off the bike altogether, and Strade Bianche, Tirreno-Adriatico and the Volta a Catalunya were scratched from his programme.

Once it became apparent that Bernal would miss that block of racing, he opted to return home to Colombia. His latest comeback, like those before it, would begin in the rarefied air of Cundinamarca, 2,600m above sea level. But the altitude was only part of the appeal. Like Antaeus, Bernal has always drawn strength from sustained contact with his homeland.

His latest return to racing, meanwhile, also brought him to familiar roads. Bernal had first announced himself on the old Giro del Trentino a decade ago when he raced for the late Gianni Savio’s Androni squad. Now the revamped race was the site of his latest renaissance. 

He was understandably a little short of sharpness on the opening days, but his pedalling was always fluid, and his ability to manage his resources smartly has always been a calling card, even back when he was a youthful Tour de France winner.

Even so, Bernal struck a cautious note when it was put to him that his Tour of the Alps display augured well for a serious tilt at the Giro d’Italia, which gets under way in Burgas on May 8.

“It means I’m good, but the Giro is something different,” Bernal told us after the podium ceremony in Bolzano. “It gives me a bit of confidence, but the Giro is the Giro. They’re two different races.”

A few hours later, Bernal boarded a plane to Belgium and two days later, he came home in fifth place at Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Sure, he didn’t race on the same plane as Tadej Pogacar and Paul Seixas, but who did? Besides, they won’t be at the Giro. Even without the mitigation of his lay-off in March, it’s been a most promising approach for Bernal.

“I’ve been a pro for 10 or 11 years now, and I have learned that you need to trust in the process,” Bernal said. “I’ve been through big injuries and big periods of bad luck, and one race, whether it’s bad or good, doesn’t change the preparation for the big goal. Even before the season started, my focus was the Giro and that’s still the case.”

In London on Tuesday, Ineos confirmed that Netcompany was taking over as title sponsor for the next five years, and during the presentation, Dave Brailsford was keen to trumpet how the Danish IT firm’s AI platform would be pivotal to their quest to regain the Tour title.

A decade ago, Brailsford’s pitch would have gained an enthusiastic hearing in the British mainstream press, but his stock as a guru has fallen considerably following a parliamentary inquiry into doping at the team and his own underwhelming spell in the Manchester United hierarchy.

In any case, it’s hard not to feel that the team’s marketing needs some work even amid this rebrand. A newfangled way to process data pales by comparison to the compellingly human story of Bernal’s endeavour to return to the very top of the sport in the four years since his life-threatening training crash.

“If he gets back to his old level, then he really deserves it, because I saw what he went through,” Bernal’s old sports director Matteo Tosatto, now of Tudor, told Domestique. “He didn’t just risk losing his career with that crash, he risked being able to lead a normal life. So to come back and do what he’s done is already amazing. If he goes on to do more, I’d only be happy for him.” 

Bernal suffered over 20 fractures in that fateful crash in January 2022, including a broken femur, patella, ribs, and vertebrae, as well as punctured lungs. He later revealed that he had a 95% chance of losing the use of his limbs due to his injuries, and although he returned to the peloton before the end of that season, it seemed fanciful to imagine he could ever challenge for Grand Tours again.

His first full season back in the peloton seemed to bear out that point, as Bernal slogged his way to finish the Tour and the Vuelta without making any real impact. His results improved in 2024, including a podium finish at the Volta a Catalunya, but the Tour was once again a sobering experience.

And yet Bernal never deviated from his task. He went again in 2025, this time focusing on the Giro, which he had won four years previously. A strong display on the gravel to Siena briefly raised hopes he might challenge for pink. That didn’t quite materialise, but Bernal held firm across the three weeks, taking seventh in Rome.

At the Vuelta in September, meanwhile, he sprinted to an emotional stage win in Mos, his first victory outside Colombia since that Giro triumph in 2021. The hope at season’s end was that it would provide a platform for a strong 2026, but all that promise seemed to unspool when Bernal suffered pain at the back of his knee in February and stepped off the carousel once more.

“He had to go back to Colombia instead of being able to race, but he showed he’s a great professional by turning up at the Tour of the Alps in the form that he had,” Tosatto said admiringly. “And now he can only improve.”

Bernal, for his part, was circumspect about his pre-Giro condition and what it means for May. “I think I’m better than I was this time last year, but that the Giro is a different race,” he said after the Tour of the Alps. “The important thing is to be good in the last week of the Giro.”

Bernal will be joined again by Arensman in Ineos’ Giro line-up, with sports director Leonardo Basso adamant that the two-pronged approach would be essential in a race where Jonas Vingegaard (Visma | Lease a Bike) sets out as the obvious and only favourite. “It’s a strength to have two leaders and we’re using that as much as we can,” Basso said. “It’s absolutely key.”

But five years on from his Giro victory, can Bernal really challenge Vingegaard for the maglia rosa or is a high overall finish the summit of his ambition after his career-altering crash and all the travails that followed it?

“I think he can improve,” said Tosatto, who guided Bernal to that 2021 victory. “Can he fight for the win? Well, I think a rider who has already won the Giro and the Tour has to think about that – and Arensman should think that way too, by the way. But Egan is one of the few riders who can crack Visma in some situations…”