"Egan Bernal hasn't hit his highest level yet. He can still get even better" - INEOS insist a return to Grand Tour wins not out of the question for 2019 Tour de France winner

After a horrific crash that almost proved career ending and could actually have been much worse, Egan Bernal has been getting close to his very best in 2024. Although over 10 minutes down at the start of stage 14, sitting 13th overall, a top-10 placing is still a very realistic proposition for the Colombian.

In fact, according to INEOS Grenadiers head coach Xabier Artetxe, Bernal is actually posting numbers that are as good if not better than when he was winning the Tour de France in 2019 and the Giro d'Italia in 2021. The only problem, there are now a slew of riders racing at an even higher level in the likes of the so-called Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard, Primoz Roglic and Remco Evenepoel.

"What we are seeing is that he's getting back to the 'numbers' [power output data] he had from when before he crashed. But there are two things: firstly, even if he is coming back to that level - and he's getting close to it and sometimes is even better than he was in some areas - since 2019 or 2020 cycling has evolved as well," Artetxe explains to Cycling News. "So in order to win, he has to do better than he was compared to back then - and we're currently moving along that road."

The good news for fans of the loveable Colombian however, the INEOS head coach is confident that Bernal can still improve even further and reach that lofty level of the 'Big 4'. "In the specific case of the Galibier you have to understand the context, too. When the Tour went over that climb last week it was stage 4 and in 2019, when he made a big difference on that climb, that was stage 18. Five years ago, we had done a lot of racing in the Tour already, so the level of general fatigue was much greater and the speeds weren't so high, maybe, either," he continues. "But even so we're really happy with how he's doing: from 2023 to 2024 he's taken a really big leap forward, and we think that Egan hasn't hit his highest level yet, either. He can still get even better."

So how has Bernal returned from the cycling wilderness to get back into the mix with the big boys? "The big difference came late in 2023," Artetxe says. "The plan then was that while he was improving enormously overall, when it came to muscular development his organism still wasn't developing so well. It wasn't ready to make that corresponding step. But despite that, we still gave him a big block of work to tackle last season, and he raced more than 80 days in 2023, trying to improve in the mid-to-long term. He did a lot of WorldTour races, too, he did the Tour and then he did the Vuelta and although he wasn't at his best level, and although people could be thinking he was overly tired, that was actually what we wanted. We wanted his body to adapt to WorldTour cycling. And we knew the period of rest after the Vuelta a España was going to be really important, to allow his muscles to recover and adapt and improve."

Could a similar Tour/Vuelta schedule be replicated in 2024? "We're going to wait and see how he finishes the Tour, we don't want to burn him out," Artetxe concludes. "But if he finishes the Tour looking good on GC, and above all knowing that he can recover well, then the Vuelta is an option that remains on the table - and very much so. It's probably the number 1 option for him, right now, after the Tour so if all goes well he'll do it. He's a Grand Tour rider, great recovery and we're in a period of improvement, we've taken a great leap forward very important. And although he's still lacking something to close the gap between the good riders - where he's at now - and the really good, let's see if little by little, we can do that."