Young British prospect Ben Tulett is set to leave Ineos Grenadiers at the end of this year, according to reports.
Gazette dello Sport journalist Ciro Scognamiglio reports that the former junior cyclo-cross World Champion will leave the British squad at the end of the season, when his contract runs out.
He also reports that the team of current Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard, Jumbo-Visma, is “a strong option” for the talented climber from Kent.
Tulett only joined Ineos last year after a turbulent stint at Alpecin-Fenix.
While the 21 year-old spends much of his time at Ineos working for team-mates he has had two stand-out results in 2023. He won the Tour of Norway just last month after taking victory by one second in the opening prologue time trial and building on that in the subsequent stages to better his own team-mate Magnus Sheffield by five seconds at the end of the the three-stage race.
In his race prior to that, the Tour of Hungary, he was second in the general classification behind Tour de France stage winner Marc Hirschi.
That result was propelled by his performance on the race’s lumpy third stage where he finished just eight seconds down on the Swiss rider and two seconds ahead of fellow Brit Max Poole, who is touted as another future GC prospect.
In 2022 there were also highlights, including fifth place in the 9km time trial at the Giro d’Italia won by Simon Yates (BikeExchange-Jayco). There he was ahead of top GC competitors including João Almeida (UAE Emirates) and eventual Giro winner Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe).
Despite spending the race in the service of Richard Carapaz, who only lost the pink jersey on the race’s penultimate stage, Tulett still finished in the top 40.
Tulett has been a sought after rider ever since he won the cyclco-cross junior World championships in 2019. But his first couple of years were marked by a feeling that he stagnated at Alpecin-Fenix, where the team was built around Mathieu van der Poel, a rider in a not too dissimilar mould to Tulett.
His latest results at Inoes Grenadiers, however, point towards him beginning to realise his potential.
