Analysing Ineos Grenadiers' Giro d'Italia team 🇬🇧 🇮🇹
Will the British squad revert to type or maintain their aggressive approach?
Egan Bernal and Thymen Arensman will lead Ineos Grenadiers at the Giro d’Italia, with the team seemingly focused on the GC.
Although the British squad lacks a pre-race favourite for the maglia rosa, they are brimming with potential top-five talent, and there’s depth in the roster with veteran Jonathan Castroviejo and TT specialist Josh Tarling.
While the eight-rider team lacks sprinting power, given that Caleb Ewan, Axel Laurance, and Sam Watson are at home, there’s a genuine question regarding how the team will approach the season's first Grand Tour.
If Arensman or Bernal are in contention for a podium place, then it’s reasonable to assume that the team will focus on such results rather than pinpoint breakaway success. At the same time, Ineos has raced 2025 with a refreshing outlook, taking races by the scruff of the neck, with their riders and staff demanding more than the conservative approach that has underpinned the squad in recent years.
Only two riders on the Giro squad have won Grand Tour stages in the past, and we’ve analyised the roster and highlighted each rider’s role and where success may be found.
Egan Bernal 🇨🇴
Age: 28
Previous record: Winner 2021
The Giro d’Italia poster and the rhetoric around the line-up certainly positioned Bernal as the team’s co-leader alongside Arensman, but the Colombian comes into the race with much less certainty regarding his GC credentials.
Bernal is a former winner, but the sport is unrecognisable from the day he held off a late challenge from Damiano Caruso to secure his last Grand Tour success. Speeds are up, Pogačar, Vingegaard and Evenepoel have set a new standard, and Bernal has yet to reach a level competitive with the best Grand Tour riders in the world.
He did start the season well with two wins at the national championships, but the collarbone break in February was a setback to his improving momentum. A respectable seventh at Catalunya showed that his trajectory was back on course, but there’s a significant difference between finishing in the top ten in a week-long race and maintaining your body for three weeks and competing against Roglič and Auyso.
Perhaps Ineos knows all this, and the co-leadership is a tactical mirage created to keep the real pressure off Arensman. Teams have certainly adopted this approach in the past, but the reality is that we’ll have a clearer sense of Bernal’s position within the team by the time the race reaches Tagliacozzo on stage 7. Don’t get me wrong; it would be one of the greatest comebacks in cycling history if Bernal could even make the podium in Rome on June 1, but we’re a long way from that point.
If he stumbles, expect Arensman to take centre stage, with Bernal positioned as either a super domestique or a stage hunter in the mountains. Even winning a stage would be huge though.