Whisper it, but are Ineos Grenadiers heading in the right direction?

This time last year, things seemed fairly bleak for Ineos Grenadiers. The British team had just finished their worst year ever, with 14 wins in 2024; Tom Pidock had announced his shock departure to a second-division squad; and Luke Rowe had already left the only team he had ever ridden for, to be a sports director somewhere else. Add in the general downbeat mood, and murmurings over billionaire owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s commitment, and the future did not seem bright.

A year on, and things do seem brighter, and their new kit is orange, too. 2025 was not their worst season ever – in fact they doubled their tally of victories to 28. Geraint Thomas has stepped off his bike and into the backroom as the new director of racing, and the ship appears to be reasonably steady. The team have finally got a fully-fledged development arm, with 12 promising riders, and there are further link ups with American and British junior squads.

Adam Becket

News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com - should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.

If Oscar Onley does move to Ineos, then they will finally have a proper GC rider, who could feasibly podium at a Grand Tour next year, and in Kévin Vauquelin, they have another exciting card to play too. TotalEnergies have come onboard as a significant sponsor, and there do not appear to be any more worries about Ineos Grenadiers’ existence, in the near future anyway. They can look further than just surviving in 2026.

Most of these are objectively good things. The development team, especially, is something that has been missing from Ineos’ structure for years, and could end up producing the next great thing in cycling. All the other top-end WorldTour teams have under-23 outfits: Visma-Lease a Bike Development, UAE Team Emirates Gen Z, Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe Rookies, and Lidl-Trek Future Racing to name a few.

It was odd, and counterintuitive, that Ineos existed for so long without a pipeline, and meant that they missed out on some young, developing talents who needed incubating before being thrust onto the WorldTour. Not every rider on the Racing Academy will work out, or at least won’t be the new Tadej Pogačar or Tom Pidcock, but one or two might, and that’s the point. You have to gamble to reap the rewards.

From a British point of view, it’s also welcome and warming that there are five young Brits on the new development squad, and Ineos will now have a relationship with camsmajaco too; identity is as important in cycling as anywhere else. If Ineos can bring through the next big British talent, rather than Visma, like with Matthew Brennan, or Picnic PostNL with Onley, then they will recover some of their likeability from these shores. They remain the only UK-registered WorldTour team.

However, this is no mea culpa, no complete reversal from last year. I was not wrong to criticise Ineos then. The team absolutely could be heading in the right direction now, but only time will tell if the right structures are in place to let the whole thing bloom. In Thomas and Dr Scott Drawer, the performance side seems to be in good hands, but there are quite a few cooks around the broth these days.

The return of Sir Dave Brailsford from the Tour de France onwards was welcomed, but his role remains unclear and undefined. He’s still not on the Ineos website, press releases give him no job title, but one can imagine that he is calling the shots, which could either be seen as a good thing, linking the team back to its glory years, or a less good thing, not letting it move on. The latter was complicated this year by the story around soigneur David Rozman, which linked Rozman to the doping doctor Mark Schmidt, who was convicted after Operation Aderlass. That has not been fully resolved.

The future of Ineos Grenadiers might have been sustained by the TotalEnergies partnership, but the two sponsors are an obstacle to them becoming suddenly likeable. The British squad are sponsored by two separate petrochemical companies. TotalEnergies, in particular, is not only one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world, with associated climate emergency concerns, but has also been alleged as being complicit in war crimes in Mozambique in a 2021 incident, allegations which TotalEnergies "firmly rejects".

Ineos Grenadiers are not alone in the sport having sponsorship from controversial means, obviously, with this being the year Israel-Premier Tech were forced to rebrand. Separately, UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Bahrain Victorious are both teams with support from Gulf states that have poor human rights records, according to Amnesty. It is worth noting, although maybe I just need to understand that professional cycling in its current guise can’t be sustained by building companies, bike brands, and supermarkets.

Ineos does not have a women’s team, either, a state of affairs which seems set, even if their new partnership with camsmajaco will see young female riders involved in the performance set-up. Ineos are not the sole WorldTour squad with no women's team, but this is an article about them. It is not all sunlit uplands from here on.

Back to the sport, though, and 2026 could be the start of something new for Ineos Grenadiers. With Onley, potentially, and Vaquelin on board, added to Thymen Arensman, Filippo Ganna, Josh Tarling, and the rest, perhaps it is time to start taking them seriously again. If not 2026, the development structure should ensure they’re heading in the right direction. Just don’t mention the “light grey” shorts.

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If you want to get in touch with Adam, email adam.becket@futurenet.com.