Tour de France 2022: Numbers are nothing if Ineos Grenadiers can’t deliver the killer blow for Geraint Thomas

There is something admirable – immensely satisfying, even – in watching Geraint Thomas ride his own tempo, stick to his numbers, and claw his way back into contention, time after time, in a Tour de France in which he occupies the third step on the podium.

But as pleasing as it is to see this wily form of conservatism trump the all-out brazenness of Tadej Pogacar, it’s not going to see the Welshman to a second Tour triumph four years after the first.

With three stage wins between them, Pogacar and Vingegaard – white and yellow – have been the stand-out stars of this Tour, alongside the man in green, Wout van Aert. The Belgian fought his way into the day’s 29-man break on Friday – as did riders from Jumbo-Visma’s rival teams UAE Team Emirates (Brandon McNulty) and Ineos Grenadiers (Dani Martinez).

But couldn’t – shouldn’t – Ineos Grenadiers have done more? Was Martinez even the right man for such a move? The Colombian has been struggling will illness in this Tour and has been far from his best. His purpose in the breakaway was twofold: to go for the win, should the legs allow, or to be there later on for Thomas, which he was.

A far bigger statement of intent, however, would have been for Adam Yates or Tom Pidcock to have got into the breakaway. The presence of the riders in fourth and ninth place on GC in the move would have asked more questions of Jumbo-Visma than Aleksandr Vlasov did – especially with the yellow jersey only having three riders with him given both Van Aert and Nathan van Hooydonck were up the road in that move.

Likewise, with Pogacar down another team-mate after the ill Spanish climber Marc Soler grappled in front of the broom wagon all day, Ineos Grenadiers surely missed a trick as using their power in numbers ahead of back-to-back summit finishes in the Pyrenees.

Adam Blythe certainly thought so. “They can’t climb with Vingegaard and Pogacar so they have got to try something new,” Blythe said on The Breakaway. “Today would have been a perfect opportunity to get Adam Yates or Tom Pidcock in the break. They can’t keep missing these opportunities.”

Not only are Ineos are the only major GC team with a full quota of riders, by having three riders in the top 10 (Yates is now sixth, Pidcock 10th) they have the weaponry to do some damage – provided they make their numbers count. As Thomas himself said last week, there’s no benefit in having cards to play if you don’t know how to use them. Well, quite.

Of course, it’s easy to be critical from the luxury of an air-conditioned office during a European heatwave. The baseline target of any day in a stage race is not to lose any time on your rivals – and Thomas, with the help of Yates and Martinez, managed to achieve just that. In that respect, it was a solid team performance – a job well done, a banana skin averted. It was also rather underwhelming.

Ineos have to be prepared to lose this Tour if they want any chance of winning it. A top five for Yates and a top 10 for Pidcock will undoubtedly be superb personal milestones for each rider – but it will mean very little to Ineos besides a trip to the podium in Paris to pick up the team classification award.

“They’ve gone from, this morning, looking like they’re sitting pretty and ready to use their power in numbers, to having the numbers but not the power – and in the end, not having the numbers either,” Robbie McEwen said on The Breakaway.

That took an almighty team effort from Jumbo-Visma – with the injured Primoz Roglic riding through the pain barrier and sacrificing his own GC chances for the good of his Danish team-mate.

Since then, Jumbo-Visma have been reduced to six riders following the withdrawal of Roglic and the abandonment of Steven Kruijswijk following his crash. With Soler finishing outside the time limit, Pogacar’s UAE are now down to five riders following the earlier Covid withdrawals of Vegard Stake Laengen and George Bennett.

Now is the time for Ineos Grenadiers to go into Jumbo-on-the-Galibier mode and try to turn this race around. If it’s man vs man vs man, Thomas stands no chance against Vingegaard and Pogacar – two young bucks over 10 years his junior. But a team effort could still swing this Tour in favour of Thomas ahead of Saturday’s decisive time trial to Rocamadour.

On the road to Peyragudes and Hautacam, Ineos need to get nasty, go full-train mode and blow the race apart. Instead of Thomas having to put out fires himself, it’s his team-mates who should be setting the peloton alight.

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