Carlos Rodriguez reportedly set to lead the INEOS Grenadiers' 2025 Tour de France challenge
Cycling
The 2025 season continues to take shape for INEOS Grenadiers. After news broke that both Egan Bernal and Joshua Tarling are heading for the Giro d'Italia next year, now it is being reported than Spanish talent Carlos Rodriguez will once again lead the British team's charge at the Tour de France.
The news has been reported by La Gazzetta dello Sport, through the respected journalist Ciro Scognamiglio. Rodriguez will once again be the INEOS Grenadiers' big general classification hope at the 2025 Tour de France, just as he has been the past couple of seasons. "After his 5th place at the Tour de France 2023 and 7th in 2024, Spanish Carlos Rodriguez of INEOS Grenadiers will target also in 2025 the French race, sources confirmed to us," writes Scognamiglio on his official X account.
The 23-year-old Rodriguez (24 by the time the 2025 Tour de France arrives ed.) will be hoping his performances at the Tour next year are slightly more reminiscent of his standout 2023 effort than the quieter 2024 performance. Although it is true that he finished inside the Top 10 of the general classification for the second straight year, before the Tour the goal was to fight for the podium, or at least improve on his 5th place in 2023, when he also managed to take a stage victory.
On the high mountain days he was not quite at the level required, and as such failed to take that next step in 2024. Also key was the fact that he had no reliable mountain domestiques during the 3 weeks, and that he always had to fight completely alone against the best in the world (Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel...).
Even so, INEOS Grenadiers are giving the Spaniard their full confidence with this decision for 2025, and all fans hope to see a version of Carlos Rodriguez that is closer to the one of two years ago than the one of this past season.
Info @Gazzetta_it - After his 5° place at @LeTour 2023 and 7° in 2024, spanish Carlos Rodriguez @INEOSGrenadiers will target also in 2025 the french race, sources confirmed us @cycling_podcast
— Ciro Scognamiglio (@cirogazzetta) November 18, 2024
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- Exactly who, Joey, is "they"? Flimsy, illogical conspiracy theories aside, it is in no one's interest (financial or otherwise) to "drive away small local events." Major cultural and macroeconomic factors are reducing ridership, but there is no "they" in this context.verve82520-12-2024
- And our virtual platforms allow us to "ride" famous place that we can't get to in person, which is a pretty fabulous aspect of this weird weird sport.RidesHills19-12-2024
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- Interesting analysis. And yet, I'm in the US, and at a recent wedding reception as a group of us older folks had to stand at a certain place to keep track of a thing, we got to talking, and every single one of us had a favorite rider, a favorite circuit of races, a moment when we fell in love with the sport, and a joy in the complexities of it all. None of us knew about the other's fandom until that moment. It's wonderful that these are my brothers-in-law, and we now know to talk about this when the spouses aren't listening. Point being: there are fans all over, and for US folks, the loss of GCN+ has been huge. As so often, it's the media bottleneck that matters more than anything else. Look at F1 in the US before Netflix, as an example.RidesHills19-12-2024
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- And it’s likely going to get worse. They are going all-out to drive away small local events which are where a lot of new riders come from. They want fee income and Olympic medals. That’s all.JoeyB19-12-2024
- Oh Lordspock12319-12-2024
- Interesting suggestion, fo you think testing Tadej’s (or Bolts’ or so many others’) parents would have given us a preview of his potential then or what criteria do you have to pick parents with?Mistermaumau19-12-2024
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- I think it’s pretty obvious what was responsible for destroying interest that used to be there.Mistermaumau19-12-2024