Team Ineos jumped from one potential internal leadership conflict to another for the 2019 Tour de France and may be holding a tiger by the tail in upstart Colombian Egan Bernal. That's the takeaway from this past month of racing leading up to the Grand Boucle for Chris Horner, the now-retired 2013 Vuelta a Espana champion who recently signed on as an analyst with NBC Sports' Tour de France broadcast team.
The story of potential duelling Team Ineos loyalties between defending Tour champion Geraint Thomas and four-time winner Chris Froome literally came crashing down almost a month before the July 6 start in Brussels when Froome suffered multiple serious fractures in a training incident at Criterium du Dauphine, ending his chances to win a record-tying fifth Tour de France this year.
Weeks later, however, Thomas' leadership for the Tour came under scrutiny when he crashed out of Tour de Suisse and 22-year-old Bernal put in an impressive performance in the mountains and in the stage 8 time trial to win the Tour tune-up race. Now Team Ineos could have a problem keeping Bernal's justified ambition leashed to Thomas' porch after the Briton's so-far wobbly lead-up to his Tour defence.
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Shifting gears before the pedalling starts
"At NBC we were thinking the main topic was going to be Geraint Thomas and Froome and how were they going to play it. That was going to be the number-one thing talked about," Horner told Cyclingnews last week form his home in Bend, Oregon.
"Then Froome crashed out, and all of a sudden we thought we don't even have a leadership battle at Ineos anymore. Then all of a sudden Egan Bernal is leading Tour de Suisse and looks really good and Thomas crashes out. From my experience as a rider and with teams, how can you not at least keep him on the side as a really close number two? All of the sudden the battle's back on within the team."
Thomas has come into the end of June in different condition than he was last year. He admitted celebrating his 2018 victory to the maximum and turned up for the start of the season overweight and off his usual form.
A 'beautiful' Colombian
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