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Could Dave Brailsford and Geraint Thomas lead Ineos Grenadiers into its new “super team” era?

Changes at the top of Jim Ratcliffe’s sporting empire are making this new Tour de France management tag team a possibility.

The breaking news is that Brailsford will exit his role at the Manchester United soccer club and return to his former leadership position across Ineos Sport. It’s only 18 months since he traveled in the opposite direction.

But Ineos billionaire owner Ratcliffe is becoming increasingly desperate for success.

Right now, with his franchises ailing and the jewel in his crown, Manchester United, lost in the dust, his cycling team, despite the ongoing successes of Visma-Lease a Bike and UAE Emirates-XRG, might be the best horse to back.

Brailsford will continue as director of Ineos Sport, and will not return to his old day-to-day role as the team principal at Ineos Grenadiers. He will be working closely with the cycling team and other units across the Ineos Sports group.

Having Brailsford closer to the cycling team should be a plus. Seven Tour de France wins in eight years, with four different riders, once made a Brailsford-led grand tour success regarded as routine.

Ask anyone closely involved with British Cycling’s Olympic program and the Tour de France who drove the performances, who led the charge when times got tough, who raised the roof when morale was low, and they will always respond: “Dave.”

Manchester United fans and football pundits who railed against a “non-football” man being put in charge of running their beloved club never saw that side of Brailsford. They’ll be pleased to see the man who they characterized as a “spoofer,” exit stage left.

In fact, Brailsford wasn’t really there to run the team’s on-pitch performance, which is probably just as well, given how disastrous their last season has been.

Thomas already eyeing backroom role in elite cycling
Thomas and Brailsford celebrate their 2018 Tour de France win when the team was backed by Sky. (Photo: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)

Now, the future structure of Ineos Grenadiers, just as the team appears to have found new impetus this season with a more aggressive racing style, will once again be subject to speculation.

The rumors over 2018 Tour de France winner Thomas moving into a senior management role after he retires at the end of the summer have recently gathered pace.

“I love cycling and the team, so would love to stay involved in some capacity,” Thomas said in April. “I think I’ve got a lot to offer on performance and going after bike races.

“There’d be a lot to learn as well, which is also exciting. It all depends on the role I’d end up doing, but that’s the type of challenge I’d be looking for.”

If Thomas does transition into management when he stops racing this season, working closely with Brailsford — both Welshmen who have known each other for over 20 years — could make Ineos Grenadiers a more purposeful unit.

This comes as team owner Ratcliffe is keen to further reduce his investment in the team, and still hoping to seal a co-sponsorship deal with Total Energies.

Thomas: ‘It was a lot more ­straightforward with Dave at the top’
Thomas has become the soul of Ineos Grenadiers. His exit this winter will leave a void. (Photo: MAARTEN STRAETEMANS/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images)

As a rider, Thomas has never shied away from criticism of the team management.

In 2022, when he finished third overall in the Tour, behind Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar, after starting the race seen by his team as an equipier-de-luxe, the Welshman said: “I always believed. Not many other people did, to be honest.”

He added that “people making out that they think I’m crap” had given him added motivation.

Brailsford quickly admitted that he and the team had underestimated Thomas.

“If I was in his shoes, I’d have a wry smile on my face,” Brailsford said of his fellow Welshman in 2022. “He’s a natural mentor.

“In the end, top young riders watch the older top riders,” Brailsford added. “For the others to watch Geraint and see how he handles himself, they will take a huge amount from that.”

Last July, Thomas was even more outspoken about the direction a lackluster Ineos Grenadiers were heading in.

Only months after Ratcliffe had acquired Manchester United, Thomas publicly bemoaned Brailsford’s absence.

“It was a lot more ­straightforward with Dave at the top,” he said. “There was clarity with everything. There was a simple process, whereas now it’s got a lot more complicated.”

“It’s like a coalition government,” he said of the management structure led by CEO John Allert. “You need a majority. Even if you didn’t agree with stuff (before) at least there was a clear ‘boom, boom, boom’ – that’s it, move on – rather than this grey area.”

Team insiders back Thomas for management
Thomas will ride his last Tour de France next month and retire later in the autumn. (Photo: Szymon Gruchalski/Getty Images))

Allert waved away the media when approached on the final Friday of the Giro d’Italia to discuss Thomas’s career plans,

Instead, it was sports director Zak Dempster who assessed where the team was at after a Giro in which Egan Bernal had been a key protagonist and finished seventh overall.

“Let’s be frank: we suffered through last season,” Dempster said. “It wasn’t easy to go through that and not be performing. When you suffer through a long period of under-performances, you force change.”

“It hasn’t been perfect,” Dempster said of the team’s more impressive 2025 results, “but the reality is that we’re not afraid to fail.”

Dempster is also one of those who can envisage Thomas succeeding in management.

“Geraint’s been a part of this team for longer than almost anyone,” Dempster said. “He’s been part of the great successes.

“I think he has got a lot to offer if he chooses to go into a role like that. It’s really what role he wants to do. I’m sure he’ll be as good (in that) as he was as a cyclist.”

Whether, given the dire situation at United and the continuing shortfall with the Grenadiers in grand tours, Ratcliffe is now making a canny move on the chess board or just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, remains to be seen.

‘Tough times don’t last, but tough people do’
Brailsford, Thomas, and Bernal led Ineos into the 2019 Tour de France. Could they do the same, but in different roles, in 2026? (Photo: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images))

Brailsford’s continued presence at the top of Ineos Sport will give the team added gravitas.

He knows better than anybody how much the team owner wants to win.

When Ineos won the Tour with Egan Bernal in July 2019, Brailsford stood on the Place de la Concorde in Paris, expanding on his vision of sports management.

“Tough times don’t last,” he said, “but tough people do. You can’t do this job without a thick skin.

“You get some people in life who are haters. They will find something to hate all the time. But if you look at the successful people in life, they are not the haters. If you want to be a winner, hating is not the way to operate, to go about it.”

“In sports management,” he added, “you need to be resilient and decide what’s important to you and what you are prepared to take on board. It takes me back to my upbringing in a Welsh slate-mining village. They were tough guys, those miners, and you learn good values from them which have stood me in good stead.”

Geraint Thomas will no doubt agree.