“Don’t want a team of princesses”: Geraint Thomas demands ownership and accountability from INEOS Grenadiers as he steps into Director of Racing role

Geraint Thomas might have hung up his wheels, but he has no intention of stepping away quietly while Tadej Pogacar and UAE Team Emirates - XRG dominate the Tour de France. In his new role as Director of Racing at INEOS Grenadiers, the 2018 Tour champion has laid out a clear, ambitious mission: rebuild the team’s winning culture and put the British squad back in position to challenge for yellow.

Speaking on the latest episode of his Watts Occurring podcast with Luke Rowe, Thomas explained that staying inside the organisation was never really in doubt, as confirmed by the announcement of his new role.

“I’m staying with the team, staying with INEOS,” he said. “From my point of view, I didn’t want to just walk away from the sport. I still love bike racing, still love riding my bike as well. I’ve got a lot of good mates in the team and I want to see the team get back up to the top.”

Instead of drifting into retirement, Thomas has chosen to step straight into the heart of the Grenadiers’ sporting project – and, crucially, he already has a big target pinned on the board.

Thomas did not bother pretending his new role was about vague “long-term development”. Right from the outset of the pod, he admitted that the conversations with Sir Dave Brailsford have centred on one thing.

“Dave B – speaking to him now about this big goal and everything we need to do to get there – it’s complicated,” Thomas said, before Rowe pushed him to reveal what the goal actually is.

“It’s no secret – it’s winning the Tour again,” Thomas replied. “I’m not totally sure on the timescale yet, or at least I can’t really say. But that’s what made us successful. That’s how we stayed at a really high level and kept a great sponsor after Sky – because we won the Tour however many times it was, seven.”

Right now, of course, the Tour runs through one man: Tadej Pogacar. Thomas made it clear that Pogacar remains the reference point for any team with yellow dreams – but he also stressed that the Slovenian’s reign is not eternal. “Pog’s not going to be around forever,” Thomas said. “In two or three years’ time, we want to be in a super strong position where we can really challenge for it, Pog or not.”

The message is simple: Pogacar may be on top now, but INEOS are tired of being cast as mere outsiders. Thomas’ job is to make sure that, when the opportunity comes – whether against Pogacar directly or in a post-Pogacar era – the Grenadiers are ready to strike.

To get there, Thomas wants to revive the internal competitiveness and high-performance edge that defined Team Sky’s dominance in the 2010s. He repeatedly referenced his years alongside Chris Froome as the blueprint for what a winning environment should look like.

“When we were at Sky, Froomey was at the top, I was coming up. I wanted his crown and he wanted to keep it,” Thomas said. “That competition was really good because it was done in the right way – nothing malicious, nothing vindictive. It was pure, good competition: pushing each other in training, with nutrition, with everything. We still shared stuff, it wasn’t like Formula 1 where drivers seem totally against each other.”

That mindset, he believes, has to be replicated throughout the team – not just among GC leaders, but across the whole squad and staff. “Even with you (Rowe ed.), Stannard, Kiryienka, whoever it was – there was always competition for places,” he told Rowe. “For me, it’s kind of the same with staff. We’ve got good staff, but how are they impacting performance this week? What are they doing that really makes the team better?”

He wants everyone inside INEOS, from mechanics up to senior management, to feel that same healthy pressure that once drove the likes of Froome, Bradley Wiggins and Thomas himself to Tour-winning heights. “It can’t just be going through the motions: go to a race, do a massage, make a few bottles,” he said. “I want to really bring that level of performance focus to the staff too.”

Thomas also pointed back to the early, audacious statements that defined Sky’s entry into the WorldTour as a key part of why the team succeeded. “When Sky first started… the goal was ‘we want to win the Tour de France within five years’,” he recalled. “You see that headline and think, ‘You’re mad, it doesn’t seem possible.’ Then there was ‘50 and 5’ – win 50 races, including five big ones. Big ones were Grand Tours, Monuments, a few big stage races. When you have a big goal like that, even if it feels a bit scary, it focuses everyone.”

He wants a similar level of ambition and clarity now. “It focuses everyone,” Thomas said. “It gives you a purpose. It makes people really think about what they’re doing.”

That is where Pogacar comes back into the picture. Knowing that UAE Team Emirates - XRG are currently the benchmark, Thomas sees this as the start of a long climb rather than a quick fix.

“Right now UAE are the top team. Visma were there for a couple of years, then UAE overtook them,” he said. “But for me, this is the start of us heading back there. That’s the goal, this is how we’re going to do it, everyone’s clear, everyone knows what they’re doing, and we go after it.”

If there was one line that will resonate with INEOS fans frustrated by recent years, it is Thomas’ blunt verdict on the oft-repeated idea that the team has been in “transition”.

“There’s been a lot of talk about transition – ‘the team’s in transition, blah blah blah’,” he said. “Transition’s over now, mate. This is where we’re going. This is what we’re doing. There’s no more ‘we’re in transition’ – that becomes an excuse for not performing.”

Thomas accepted that there has been genuine change and reset behind the scenes, but insisted that at some point you have to move from explaining the process to delivering results. “To be fair, it has been a period of change and transition, for sure,” he said. “But you can’t just keep talking about it. At some point, it’s happened. This is where we are, and this is where we’re going.”

He also pointed out that dominance in elite sport is cyclical – Sky’s string of Tours, the New England Patriots in the NFL, Manchester City, the All Blacks – and argued that there is nothing inevitable about UAE’s current supremacy. “Sport runs in cycles,” he said. “Right now UAE are incredible, but for me, this is the start now. We’re heading there. That’s the goal and this is how we’re going to do it.”

Beyond slogans and big-picture talk, Thomas is clearly obsessed with the nuts and bolts of performance. In the pod, he returned again and again to the idea that elite riders need to strip away chaos and take ownership of their careers.

“Helping the boys understand that ‘a simple life is an elite life’,” he said. “You wake up, breakfast, training, home, recover, travel when you need to, camps when you need to. Your home is set up properly, everything you need is there.”

“It sounds obvious, but so many people aren’t like that,” he added. “They’re travelling around: ‘I’ve got to go from this race to that place, then over there, I need this bike, that bag…’ It’s all faff in your head you don’t need. The more you can limit that, the better.”

He wants riders to be proactive rather than passive – not just following a programme, but taking responsibility for what they need to improve. “A lot of them are just told what to do,” he said. “If you’re fully in charge – captain of your own ship – and everyone on that ship is there for you, it’s so much more powerful than just being told everything.”

That extends to race preparation and reconnaissance. While Rowe mentioned giving classics riders freedom to head to Flanders on their own initiative, Thomas made it clear he has little time for over-protected riders waiting for everything to be handed to them. “You don’t want a team of princesses, that’s for sure,” he said. “It’s about giving them ownership. With that comes responsibility and accountability.”

One of Thomas’ biggest assets in this role is the trust he already has inside the Grenadiers’ dressing room. He believes those relationships will allow him to bridge the gap between riders and management in a way that a pure “office” figure never could.

“I feel like I’ve got that relationship with a lot of the guys where hopefully they can be honest with me – maybe speak more openly than they would to someone else,” he said. “That trust is important. If they tell me something, I’m not just going straight to that person unless they want me to. I’ll try to help them solve it, or if they want me to speak to Dave or the coach, then I will.”

He’s already started that process. “I’ve already had a few calls with some of the boys,” Thomas revealed. “I’ve said to them, ‘Look, we’ve still got the same relationship as mates, but this is also the start of the new one.’ They’ve been honest with me, opened up about stuff the team probably wouldn’t know. That’s good – that’s how they’ll improve.”

Above all, he wants to recreate the kind of environment where riders and staff can challenge each other bluntly but constructively – the same culture Rowe remembers from the team’s peak years.

“It’s about creating an environment where you can challenge each other,” Thomas agreed. “If I fucked up, I’d put my hand up straight away. If I thought I’d done the right thing and someone else didn’t, they’d call me out and I’d do the same to them.”

For all the talk of structures, goals and culture, what really comes through in the podcast is Thomas’ enthusiasm. This is not a reluctant retiree ticking a box; this is a Tour winner moving into the next phase with genuine hunger.

“I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m pretty excited about it really,” he laughed. “I feel like I’ve got a lot of ideas. Dave keeps telling me to slow down, take my time. One step at a time.”

His personal ambition is clear too. “My goal is to develop as much as I can, gain more and more responsibility in the team and grow in this role,” he said.

And for fans who worried that a move upstairs might tame his personality, he had one last reassurance for Watts Occurring listeners. “Of course we’ll keep going [with the pod],” he told Rowe. “We’ll still be as honest as ever when it comes to talking about racing and things. It’ll just change slightly – we’re still involved in the sport, just from a different perspective now.”

If his words are anything to go by, that new perspective could be exactly what INEOS Grenadiers have been missing in their search for the next Tour de France winner – and for the team that once owned July, the fight to topple Pogacar may just have found its new architect.