'You've got to be realistic' - Geraint Thomas explains Ineos' revised Tour approach

Cycling, however, has a habit of throwing up disruptions to the planned script. Onley, fourth overall a year ago, has endured an ill-starred beginning to life at the team, and his crash at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes ruled him out of the Tour altogether.

It means that Ineos look set for another Tour of treading water, with Thomas - appointed director of racing following his retirement last year -conceding that his team’s ambitions will be tempered by a heavy dose of realism in a race where the top two places again look the preserve of Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard.

In truth, even had Onley been fit to race, the team’s objectives would have been modest compared to their glory days in the last decade. With riders like Remco Evenepoel, Juan Ayuso and Paul Seixas on show, Onley would have been hard pressed to better or even replicate last year’s finish.

In Onley’s absence, Netcompany-Ineos have selected a team that looks set to target stage victories rather than a high overall finish, despite the presence of Thymen Arensman and former Tour winner Egan Bernal in the line-up. Both men raced the Giro d’Italia in May, and it remains to be seen what effect those efforts will have on their performance in July.

Kévin Vauquelin also features, along with Filippo Ganna, Michal Kwiatkowski, Josh Tarling, Dorion Godon and Tobias Foss. In a video call with media including Domestique, Thomas outlined his team’s approach to the Tour.

“It’s a combination of being realistic, but also really ambitious and wanting to go after it every day,” Thomas said. “We really want to get stuck into the race and just give the boys the freedom to express themselves and just race their bikes and enjoy it. Like, really be in the race and make things happen rather than just be sitting back and letting things happen to them.

“We all know the dominance of a couple of riders, but I think we’re still super keen to see what we can do, and the selection was based on that.”

Freedom of expression was never a priority for the team in their pomp, when they annexed seven Tours out of eight between 2012 and 2019. Their tactical approach back then was often to bolt the race down after amassing an early lead, as though parking the bus in the manner of José Mourinho’s Inter.

In the Pogacar era, they have made attempts at a more expansive approach, but with mixed results. Ineos have scored four stage wins at the Tour since their last podium finish in 2022, but they have slipped further from GC relevance. Their best finisher last year was Arensman in 12th. 

Before that, Carlos Rodríguez took fifth in 2023 and seventh in 2024, but the Spaniard was surprisingly deemed surplus to requirements this time around. When Ineos outbid Movistar to retain his services in 2023, Rodríguez looked central to their future Tour plans, but his status is altogether less clear now.

“It was a super tough decision, and it wasn’t based on one rider versus another rider, it was more just a general balance of the team and wanting to be competitive throughout the race over all terrains,” Thomas said of Rodríguez’s omission.

“I was a teammate of Carlos’ a lot longer than I was in this role, so for me personally it was strange to be talking about that, but he’s still a massive asset to this team and still got a massive role to play.”

When Ineos signed Onley from Picnic-PostNL last winter, the Scot gave the team a figurehead to built around, much as Bradley Wiggins did when he joined from Garmin on the eve of the team’s launch 16 years previously. Thomas conceded that Onley’s enforced absence from the Tour had radically changed the composition of the eight-man roster.

“Yeah, most definitely,” Thomas said.  “From the start of the year, he was our GC guy. He was going well, but obviously he never really got a chance to show that. And as soon as that [Dauphiné crash] happened, obviously it was disappointing, but you need to dust yourself off and look forward. You can’t wallow in what could have been or what should have been. 

“We look forward and we make our new objectives and new plan, and we’ve still got a really great team to go out there.”

In May, it was confirmed that Netcompany had come on board as naming sponsor of the team, adding an extra €20 million to the budget each season for the next five years. One imagines that the Danish IT outfit and Ineos owner Jim Ratcliffe will expend a tangible return on their investment at the Tour. What, then, would constitute a successful race for Netcompany-Ineos?

“Well, without sort of like sounding a bit wishy-washy, I think it’s about how the boys race and how they gel and build and work together and look into the future,” Thomas said. “There’s a core team here that will continue on. We’ve got ambitions to win this race in the near future and a lot of these boys are going to be key to that.

“When it comes to results, obviously, you want to win stages, you want results. If someone is on GC, then great, but I don’t think anything is hinged on one thing. We just want to be fully in the race. We don’t want to be passengers, and we want to be active and really fighting for those wins.

“You know, when you don’t have an out-and-out favourite for the GC, it definitely means you race differently.”

It is, Thomas conceded, world removed from his 2018 Tour victory, when he lined up as co-leader with Chris Froome, while Bernal served as a luxury domestique.

“You’ve got to be realistic,” Thomas said. “We’re not going to sit here now and just say, ‘Look, we’re going to win the yellow jersey.’ But in the back of my mind, it’s not like that’s a closed door.”