The loss of Chris Froome from Team Ineos’ 2019 Tour de France squad leaves an undeniable hole in the British team’s line-up, but the final eight-rider squad that will depart for Brussels in just over a fortnight’s time will still have a number of options for the overall title, with defending champion Geraint Thomas and 22-year-old Egan Bernal. In fact, despite Froome’s vacancy, the most significant question facing the selectors at present will be over how much leadership responsibility they place on Bernal. The inquiry into who fills Froome’s slot is somewhat secondary.
To answer the latter question, there’s no direct replacement for Froome. In fact, even pooling together all the existing Tour de France winners in the current peloton – Thomas and Vincenzo Nibali – would still only fill half of Froome’s Tour win quota.
And while Froome’s horrific injuries from the Critérium du Dauphiné rule him out not only of the Tour but also the rest of the season, this isn’t a carbon copy of the situation in which Team Ineos found themselves on the eve of the Giro d’Italia. In that instance, Bernal broke his collarbone days out from the event, and the team were unable to put forward a genuine GC replacement at the time. They headed into the Giro with an incredibly young and inexperienced team – Christian Knees, aside – before Pavel Sivakov rescued them with a fine performance.
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The Froome-shaped void at the Tour should be diluted by Thomas and Bernal, and while the rival teams will take morale from Froome’s bad luck and see it as a prime opportunity to throw Thomas off his perch, Ineos are still the team to beat.
Team insiders have suggested that seven of the eight spots for the Tour de France have already been penciled in, with a further five to seven riders in with varying shouts of taking the last place.
Team Ineos are unlike several of their rivals, such as Jumbo-Visma, UAE Team Emirates and Mitchelton-Scott, in that they don’t have a pure sprinter within their ranks. That may sound limiting in terms of options, but it also refines focus and means that whoever they choose to fill that last spot will be an all-rounder who can climb as well as perform on the flat.
The final spot
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