Stage 18 comes to a thrilling conclusion as the breakaway riders evade the sprint teams. For the Grenadiers it was all about staying out of trouble today, with @_rccarlos finishing safely in the peloton to retain fourth overall #TDF2023
Steve Cummings on INEOS Tour strategy: "The responsibility has often fallen on us to try and control things in the battle for the podium and we did that"
CyclingFriday, 21 July 2023 at 12:43
INEOS Grenadiers are not in the fight for the win of the Tour de France but they have been for the podium. Almost ignoring the fight that had happened between Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, the team and Carlos Rodríguez raced their own race for the podium and will end in or close to it.
"Saturday is going to be huge. It could be a real tactical battle," Steve Cummings said in an interview with Cyclingnews. "Rather than a stage like Liège-Bastogne-Liège, it's perhaps got a profile that's more similar to the last day in Paris-Nice and we all know what happens there every year. So it could be the same. I suspect it will blow apart."
In the Vosges the riders will find a very difficult yet short and explosive stage where further moves in the overall classification can happen. The Spaniard starts stage 19 1:16 minutes behind Adam Yates who will now not have any responsibility to work for Pogacar, making it a harder task. However INEOS are satisfied with his performance, and have on multiple mountain stages - including the most recent one to Courchevel - worked in the head of the peloton quite a lot so as to control their rivals in the fight for the podium.
"It's more a question of giving it time, seeing if he can recover a bit before Saturday. He's doing his maximum, but we still don't know what his upper limit is, so let's see," Cummings said of the 22-year old who won in Morzina and is having a breakthrough debut Tour de France. "It's his first Grand Tour (Cummings means Tour de France, ed.) and he's learned a lot and hasn't made many mistakes. Vingegaard and Pogačar being a step ahead of the rest, the responsibility has often fallen on us to try and control things in the battle for the podium and we did that again [on stage 17]."
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