Pidcock/Ineos Rift – what’s up?

Ineos are paying TP to be a publicity machine, and he’s pretty good value for that, particularly compared to the rest of the team being absolutely anonymous anywhere else

Only if 5-6 other riders are not there

True, but comparing him to TP for a grand tour GC, he’s got more chance

I’m sure he’s not easy to work with.  But if that is a bigger problem now than since they last renewed his contract it’s their environment and not his personality which has changed.

They can’t reasonably have the hump with him because his multi-discipline riding rather than focussing on the road leads to compromise.  Because that’s *precisely* what they signed up to do.  He made it clear in pretty much every public statement he made before he turned road pro that he wanted a team which would support his varied ambitions. And they quickly extended his contract after a season of multi-disciplinary riding and compromise on the road.  In fact they hailed his versatility when they announced that renewal.  And all of it was long term project, not least the grand tour thing (cf Geraint’s trajectory) which is also subject to massive uncertainty (cf all the other riders in the history of cycling who have targeted that).

Here’s Brailsford:  “Tom’s an incredibly talented bike racer but what sets him apart is his versatility…The length of the relationship we’ve agreed with Tom gives us the opportunity to enable his ambitious, multi-disciplined goals”.

(source https://www.pinkbike.com/news/tom-pidcock-signs-new-5-year-contract-with-ineos-grenadiers.html)

Ineos is falling apart.  They were very good at one thing for quite a long time. It was boring and soulless and let’s be honest smelled a bit fishy but Brits (including me, for a long time) forgave that because of results.  They can’t do that any more, and it turns out they aren’t any good at other things.  The wins have tried up.  The big money isn’t flowing any more.  They lost key personnel. They are no longer the favoured plaything of the big boss.  Bad managers are flailing, including resorting to public vindictiveness.  This public rift with Pidcock is just a symptom.  I don’t know if he’s a nice guy.  I like watching him ride but I don’t think I’d want to be his boss or teammate.  But they are an employer and in this instance they are being a shitty one:  they chose him, committed to him long term, threw the money at him.  They can’t now turn around and blame his personality, his versatility, he results etc etc which are all more or less what they signed up and paid for.

What do you think INEOS are not doing to support Pidcock, [Ganna, Hayter, Tarling]

FTFY – they have a squad who are all underperforming is the point being made up thread (Tarling perhaps too early to tell). These guys should be doing better but if the team is falling apart the management are also failing the riders with the potential they have in a squad not able to fulfil their individual/collective promise

Lots of other teams have had great results this season in the GCs and one-day events. TP is the one rider at Ineos that people not on STW will know of, so not sure why he’s getting a hard time for getting paid lots. I think there was a thread a few weeks ago lauding his outrageous racing cojones. We can’t have it both ways. I’m in Tom’s camp – Ineos are letting him down, letting the others down

I think Ineos problem is simply that they don’t have pog or vingd on their team? Same as any other gc team really.

TP has real technical bike handling talent especially off road that those 2 will never ever be able to come even close to. They win instead on the gc climbing fitness pissing contest which frankly has been boring for years. I doubt he’ll ever be able to do the same as them so why should he leave all his talents behind the sofa for years with the outcome that he still unlikely to beat POG in gc?

Unfortunately real bike handling skill doesn’t necessarily pull in the bucks even if the racing it creates is IMO often way more exciting. I reckon he should sharpen up his sprinting again as hes got the agression / elbows for that aplenty!

TP has real technical bike handling talent especially off road that those 2 will never ever be able to come even close to.

Pog being a former national cx champion seems quite close.

Regarding TP and others salaries https://en.brujulabike.com/how-much-money-do-top-mountain-bikers-make/ is interesting and seems about right to me. TLDR Pidcock $4M, Van der Poel $2M, Schurter $500K, Gwin $1M in his best year.

I’d agree with those on the ‘Ineos problem’ side. The way things have panned out results-wise for Pidcock can’t be a great surprise to anyone.

I will say though, I don’t think any of the top road riders could live with him on an MTB – when he turns up he pretty much always wins. Van der Poel did win occasionally, but never felt anywhere near as nailed on as Pidcock for the win, which suggests that the MTB XC specialists maybe aren’t so bad after all. Pidcock’s build and talents seem perfect for XC to me.

Its the weight of expectation on Pidcocks little shoulders too that a lot of people seem to be overlooking. He would have known all to well what Ineos were expecting of him, and what riders he was expected to be challenging podium spots for.

The stress he must be under has to be unbelievable; his worse fears being an example of someone who failed after such early promise. We have seen other great talents crack under this previously – and also very recently. His prickly diva like attitude is probably a coping mechanism to the pressure/stress.

The big spending teams appear to have their young talents already, and maybe he will be happy taking a huge pay cut and joining a lower team that will be happy for him to ride the GTs for the odd stage win and classics. I really dont see him having the opportunity as Ineos initially presented him – and at best, he may find himself being in the Yates brothers position, which aint so bad for most pro cyclists ..

We can’t have it both ways. I’m in Tom’s camp – Ineos are letting him down, letting the others down

I know it’s very modern, but you don’t have to be on one side or another. In the real world, people on both sides of relationships personal, business or otherwise, make mistakes / have faults. INEOS Grenadiers can be letting Pidcock down, but equally he can at the same time, be letting them down – the two things aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. Equally INEOS, the team owners can be at fault, who knows.

Most of this is ‘fiction’ anyway, in the sense that none of us really know what’s going on and perhaps never will. All you can really do is hope that however it’s resolved, it works for everyone and a really, talented, exciting young rider gets to maximise his ability, have the career he deserves and, maybe most importantly, is happy.

to be fair, the drama around this and other self made crisis are the most interesting thing Ineos have done in a few years

Speaking of anonymous / poor results, Michael Rasmussen (yes, the former doper chucked off the Tour for lying about his whereabouts) has popped up talking about Chris Froome basically saying that he’s another rider who’s wildly overpaid for a year of absolute nothingness.

Speaking of anonymous / poor results, Michael Rasmussen (yes, the former doper chucked off the Tour for lying about his whereabouts) has popped up talking about Chris Froome basically saying that he’s another rider who’s wildly overpaid for a year of absolute nothingness.

Says most people, including his employer, but that is their mistaken strategy not Froome’s,  I hope that the person who got Froome the IPT gig for that money got their fair %age!

I can’t imagine that a rider with his achievements; Olympic Golds, multi National and World Championships jerseys is anything but a positive for any team given the results he’s had in just 2024 alone. That he hasn’t, so far, done that well (by comparison) in GCs (but a win in Amstel Gold as a commiseration prize) is probably more to do with the team under-performing as a whole. It seems to me that when TP is riding ‘by himself’ – XC and cyclo-cross, he can perform just as well as his peers if not significantly better, put him in a GC tour when he needs the support of 8 other riders and the ‘whole’ doesn’t do that well.

As BWD points outs there’s probably a bit from column A and a bit from column B when looking at why, so far, he’s not done what lots of folks seem to think he’s capable of on the road

As BWD says, we won’t know (unless TP brings out an autobiography in several years) what went on in Italy last week.

As a racing enthusiast, for me  TP is so exciting to watch especially on the down hills, but, to get him near the front during mountain stages to achieve this feat is up to the team. Which team will become clear soon enough. However I personally like him but don’t see him as a GC rider, could he be when older and accepting of having a team around, we don’t know.

He’s up there with the very best road riders in the world, sadly also trying to beat the likes of Pog and Vinegogogo for several years to come. Good luck to him and Hopefully he’ll choose a team that can let him get the stage wins he needs.

Pog being a former national cx champion seems quite close.

Of Slovenia? Haven’t even double check that but LOL at that comparison

Ineos are paying TP to be a publicity machine, and he’s pretty good value for that, particularly compared to the rest of the team being absolutely anonymous anywhere else

In honesty, one of the weird things about Ineos sponsoring a cycling team is that they don’t actually need publicity in the way that a consumer-facing company might. They’re not selling flooring, shampoo, a supermarket, sports equipment, a dubious nation state or anything else. You have to think that it’s basically a sort of grandiose hobby thing for Jim Ratcliffe.

I get that the cycling team itself is a distinct entity and benefits from publicity in its own right, but why Ineos wants a cycling team or indeed Manchester United or any of its other acquisitions in the first place bemuses me slightly. Before they took over the team, most people didn’t even know the company existed and, if it weren’t for the sports stuff, they never would have.

It seems to be widely accepted that Froome hit the jackpot with his Israeli sportswashing contract, no?

Vanity signing – like Ronaldo going to play football in Saudi Arabia.

TP has real technical bike handling talent especially off road that those 2 will never ever be able to come even close to.

I may be wrong, but didn’t Pogacar match Pidcock’s 2022 Galibier time in this year’s tour? I think Ayuso went even faster. Obviously you can’t make a straight comparison there, but to say Pogacar can’t ‘come close’ isn’t entirely right.

I will say though, I don’t think any of the top road riders could live with him on an MTB – when he turns up he pretty much always wins. Van der Poel did win occasionally, but never felt anywhere near as nailed on as Pidcock for the win, which suggests that the MTB XC specialists maybe aren’t so bad after all. Pidcock’s build and talents seem perfect for XC to me.

I’d disagree stats would suggest they are about even.

https://mtbdata.com/rider-vs-rider/mathieu-van-der-poel/vs/thomas-pidcock

They’ve only raced 9 times together and 2 of them MVDP had erm mishaps another DNF is short track worlds MVDP didn’t even race and then the Olympic test event is not a real race. There were 3 race in 2021 where they are basically even.

Look at MVDP 2017 to 2019 when he stopped doing much MTB he was dominant. No Pidcock wasn’t there then but Nino and others were to compare against. Pidcock moved into that role 2020 onwards.

Unfortunately if what both of them are saying, MVDP more MTB and Pidcock mostly road, we will be denied what could be an amazing battle.

For me Pidcock is mostly wasted on the road. Can and will win stuff but more often will come up against one or more of the specialists and I don’t think GTs will ever be his thing.

For me Pidcock is mostly wasted on the road. Can and will win stuff but more often will come up against one or more of the specialists and I don’t think GTs will ever be his thing.

I agree with this.

If he stuck with MTB, CX and the classics there would be very few who could compete with him and I’m sure he’d get paid a tidy sum along the way!

If you are Froome, and you have achieved what he has achieved, suffered that injury, and then, as the end of your career comes into view and you get offered a ludicrous amount of money to ride on, you can’t blame hime for taking the bait.  I could do without the excuses, mind you, but it isn’t a career wasted.  Pidcock, a seemingly spiky character, seems to be floundering somewhat inside a team that is itself lacking direction; the parallels of a big name signing at Man Utd seem apt.  He needs to prioritise his ambitions and see how they fit with Ineos or AN other team.

Speaking of anonymous / poor results, Michael Rasmussen (yes, the former doper chucked off the Tour for lying about his whereabouts) has popped up talking about Chris Froome basically saying that he’s another rider who’s wildly overpaid for a year of absolute nothingness.

That was one of the last good things Ineos/Sky did. They could see he was never getting back to old levels and let him leave. Froome also played a blinder getting a huge contract when he knew he was on the decline. He likely has to play the game a bit with his PR but he knows full well his winning days are over.

I’ve looked at Ineos’ wins this season and it doesn’t make good reading at all:

14 wins in total
10 wins excluding National Championships
8 road wins outside of National Championships (excluding TTs)

Of those who have won:
Narvaez (Ecuador NC & Giro Stage 1) is leaving the team to UAE
Pidcock (Amstel Gold) is rumoured to be leaving
Hayter (GB NC) is leaving for Quickstep

So for next year Ineos will only have 5 riders who have won a race this year:
Tarling (Gran Camino Stage 1, GB NC TT)
Carlos Rodriguez (Tour of Basque Cuntry Stage 6, Tour of Romandie GC, Dauphine Stage 8)
Foss (Tour of Alps Stage 1)
Ganna (Giro Stage 14, Italian NC TT, Tour of Austria Stage 4)
Riviera (Tour of Austria Stage 2)

Coming in next year, only Sam Watson(1) Axel Laurance (4) have a pro win to their name this season

What is more worrying is the number of second places rather than first places and being unable to convert those 2s to 1s.
14 1st places vs 25 2nd places
Does this show a lack of support for the lead riders in the final of races?

Finally, procyclingstats, reckons that they are the second worst world tour team in terms of valuable riders lost at the start of last season – does this show that Ineos is a sinking ship?
https://www.procyclingstats.com/teams/transfer-value-won-lost
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As above, I believe this is the worst season ever for Team Sky / Ineos in their entire history. Other teams have overtaken them in many ways and there is no indication as to how they will get back, especially if the funding is being spent on other toys of Sir Jim Radcliffe, be it the Americas Cup sailing team or Manchester United.

All pro road teams have a lifecycle and I would suggest that this is the end of the cycle for this team. They came in with a bang, sustained it well, but everything moves on eventually, see Manchester United, Chelsea, Ferrari, Williams or loads of other teams from other sports.

There’s a pretty good article behind the paywall on Escape Collective about his move to Q.365. The gist of it is that he feels really unsupported at Ineos and the squillionaire owner of Q.365 has promised him the world. It certainly signals a move away from grand tour GC racing in the immediate future as there’s no realistic prospect of his new team contesting in that arena (or even getting a Tour wildcard next year). I supect we’ll see him harvesting points in lower races to boost their chances of being promoted to WorldTour at the end of next year – expect some exciting battles between him and Marc Hirschi.

As for what’s happened at Ineos, I’m not aware of a drop in funding for the team – Ratcliffe has an effectively unlimited supply of money on the scale of bike team budgets. Rather it seems the management is completely misfiring. Off the top of my head I can think of 3 of their prominent riders who have complained publicly about the team (Thomas, Arensman and Pidcock) as well as Dan Bigham. Then there’s the fact that Tarling ended the season in tatters and Hayter & Rowe are both leaving. Sounds rubbish.

There was a whole lot of talk this time last year about Ineos merging with Quickstep, though the merger that apparently eventually fell through turned out to be Quickstep and Jumbo Visma. The possibility of a merger still makes a lot of sense in a slightly sociopathic sense: potentially combining the stronger half of Ineos’ rider roster with another team and ditching much of the existing management structure. Maybe bring on some big new sponsors too? Are there any wealthy bloodthirsty dictatorships that haven’t yet added cycling success to their sportswashing efforts?

I thought Pidcock doesn’t see eye to eye with Steve Cummins either.

Wonder if it got to a ‘it’s him or me’ and Ineos said ‘good bye then’ to TP.

Maybe the question is, why are Ineos sponsoring bikes? Ratcliffe’s a psychopath who likes to buy control over people then make them dance, is he not getting erect enough from this deal?

[anagallis_arvensis]

anagallis_arvensis

Full Member

A-A….Is Pidock tanned? This is all starting to look VERY familiar…

Your defence of him reminded me of your posts on a certain ex rugby player.

A-A….Is Pidock tanned? This is all starting to look VERY familiar…

Your defence of him reminded me of your posts on a certain ex rugby player.

Oh right, yes get it now…..Pidcock isn’t my type!! But current rugby player, nailed on Lions 12 next year. Pencoed’s finest

All pro road teams have a lifecycle and I would suggest that this is the end of the cycle for this team. They came in with a bang, sustained it well, but everything moves on eventually, see Manchester United, Chelsea, Ferrari, Williams or loads of other teams from other sports.

Well yeah, but if you go back to football, teams reinvent themselves as do cycling teams. Look at Arsenal post-Wenger. First of all you bring in Unai Emery who struggles with the legacy of tiny skill elves and big egos like Ozil and Aubamayang. He fails. Then Mikel Arteta arrives and rebuilds the team culture, axes the big money earners who don’t fit his philosophy and eat up a load of the wage budget and recruits players and staff who fit in with what he wants the club to be. Three years later they’re arguably as good as peak year Wenger teams and challenging for the title again.

I suspect something similar’s happening at Ineos. Rod Ellingworth copped the poisonous legacy stuff and was always in Brailsford’s shadow, maybe now the new guys are rebuilding the team with younger riders and clearing out some of the old guard who don’t fit in with how they see the team going forward.

I think the ‘idea’ of Tom Pidcock – maverick superstar young Brit racer who can win on road, cx and mountain bike – forges his own course, tells the team when and where he wants to race, has a fancy Red Bull helmet and a dedicated Tom Pidcock entourage – is maybe at odds with the reality, which is that although he’s competitive on his day and a superb mountain bike racer, where his skills plus pro road engine make him a proper force – he’s not consistently a winner on the road and tends to win maybe one or two races per season, compare and contrast say, to MvdP.

That’s not terrible, but it’s not a good use, from the Ineos point of view of money they could be spending on bringing through bright, young road talents, which is what they’re apparently trying to do, because essentially they’re a team focussed on winning the Tour de France.

Pidcock reminds me a bit of Mezut Ozil at Arsenal. Fantastic player on his day, but paid a huge amount and never quite delivering, lovely to watch, but ultimately didn’t deliver enough when it mattered. It didn’t stop Ozil being a fantastic player, but it also meant that his wages could be better spent eg: bringing through the likes of Bukayo Saka and buying young players who better fitted what the team actually needed. All of which is wasted on anyone who doesn’t follow football, but that’s how it feels to me.

does this show that Ineos is a sinking ship?

I don’t think that’s in question at this point, it’s more a case of working out where it hit the iceberg — and who’s in the life rafts.

On the comparison to other once-mighty sports franchises, I think the big difference is that Man Utd, Ferrari etc. have fantastic brand value/loyalty and a very real chance of getting back up there again (see BWD’s case in point about the Arse).

Cycling teams’ branding is tied to their sponsors to a much greater degree (more than any sport?), so they effectively disappear: Tinkoff-Saxo, HTC Highroad, US Postal etc.

As someone said, Ratcliffe bought at the top of the market and nobody in their right mind would spend that much on Ineos now, with it being so dysfunctional and underachieving.

If they do merge with QS, they better put Patrick Lefevre in charge.

Cycling teams’ branding is tied to their sponsors to a much greater degree (more than any sport?), so they effectively disappear: Tinkoff-Saxo, HTC Highroad, US Postal etc.

Seriously? The peloton’s full of teams that have basically rebranded and carried on with different names and different sponsors. UAE, for example, was Lampre before. Movistar was Banesto. Jayco has had about five different names in the last ten years. Visma, in its various guises, was previously Saxobank. Quickstep was Highroad etc. The list is pretty much endless – elite cycling is a sort of shape-shifting paradise…

Admittedly that’s not necessarily quite the same with Ineos Grenadiers as they’re a wholly-owned company – Tour Racing, I think – which Sky sold to them lock stock and barrel as a going concern, but teams often don’t ‘effectively disappear’ – of course some do, Qhubeka for example, but even then it’s sort of reborn as Q 36.5, which sort of brings things full circle – they just re-emerge with the same people but different sponsors.

Man Utd, Ferrari etc. have fantastic brand value/loyalty and a very real chance of getting back up there again

Football’s commercial model is completely different to cycling, the point I was making was about brands, it was how you rebuild an elite sports team that’s lost its mojo. In an alternative reality where Egan Bernal didn’t ride into the back of a bus and carried performing at an elite level, Ineos would be doing just fine. The ‘problem’ with cycling as a sport is that the Tour de France dominates it disproportionately, proper gorilla in the room stuff, but only one team can win it.

I’m not saying Ineos aren’t having a nightmare season, they clearly are, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t revive their fortunes under skilled management making ruthless, focussed decisions, which is what Arsenal is currently doing. That doesn’t mean that they will, but teams fluctuate in performance regularly. Look at Quickstep currently and compare them to a few years back for example.

Regarding Pidcock ‘not delivering’ for Ineos… I mean, although of course the Ineos cycling team will surely be looking for a Tour winner so are likely not happy as he’s not really looking like a Tour winner now,  we don’t really know what Ineos the company want or think they get from the sponsorship do we?

It does seem as though Ineos the company have ambition to go beyond being an anonymous massive oil company – the Land Rover and https://www.ineoshygienics.com/ being what I’m aware of, so as primarily British deal Pidcock getting a couple of golds in the Olympics is presumably quite a big deal for them. Otherwise if it’s a Radcliffe vanity project, Pidcock is still probably one of the top 5 in terms of recognition, although that might be my British/XC/CX lens.

So I’m still going to say it’s primarily an Ineos cycling team problem. It’s not like he’s not winning races, just maybe not the ones they want to win.

they just re-emerge with the same people but different sponsors.

Sometimes/often with the same people in management, but there’s far less continuity of identity than in other sports. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s no real value in a team beyond the actual World Tour licence and the current roster of riders and management.

Partly because fans are only really interested in the riders (which is probably a good thing TBH).

The problem is, there’s only a certain number of riders you can sign to bring into the potential of winning of competing in a TDF, for example at the moment which rider would you sign and build a team around ? I can’t really think of one, even factoring in riders like Enric Mas, he’s ‘there’ but he’s not…. Brandon McNulty, again yeah but no. Even the best INEOS have in Carlos Rodriguez, as soon as it gets to the pointy end, he’s floundering… But more importantly in the last 10-15 years the best riders have had support, how often did we see Kuss taking Vingo to the top and let him pass with 2km to go, the same with Pogi now,  but INEOS don’t even have that, by the time we get to the last 2-3 riders for UAE, we’re already down to 1 for INEOS, they don’t just need a single GC rider, they need more…

This Pidcock story has once again proven just how ignorant a lot of the road media/ fans are towards MTB racing. Even in 2024, there is a lack of respect for it.

A lot of them make out he’s been beating amateur/ semi-pros – forgetting it took MvdP a few seasons to finally crack it, and even since then he’s had two high profile crashes. Pidcock turned up and was competitive straight away – he’s made for XC MTB racing.

And all this ‘overpaid’ nonsense; Ineos knew what they were getting when they signed him – and still thought he was worth a big wage. He’s won WT road races, World championships in 2 disciplines, won numerous World Cups in 2 disciplines, and 2 Olympic titles…..You sign Pidcock and you get wins. Simple……

It’s no good comparing him to anybody else, as no other male rider is mixing 3 disciplines at a World class level. And as for trying to compare Pogacar’s CX National title in Slovenia ( that hotbed of CX..) as demonstrating his technical skills…….blimey, I’d expect better on a MTB forum.

Yeah, totally agree their main issue is they can’t even buy success now –  as there’s no serious GC contenders available (and they probably wouldn’t go to Ineos now anyway).

It’s no good comparing him to anybody else, as no other male rider is mixing 3 disciplines at a World class level. And as for trying to compare Pogacar’s CX National title in Slovenia ( that hotbed of CX..) as demonstrating his technical skills…….blimey, I’d expect better on a MTB forum.

True but Pog is a properly good descender on the road I doubt he’s slower than Pidcock.