"The approach now is offensive racing" - INEOS refocus Tour de France goals after GC timeloss and Filippo Ganna DNF

It's been a somewhat disastrous start to the 2025 Tour de France for the INEOS Grenadiers. Whilst spirits were high and the team were notably full of optimism pre-race after the return of Sir Dave Brailsford, over the course of the first four stages, a lot more has gone wrong than gone right.

On the opening stage, one of the team's protected riders, Filippo Ganna was forced to abandon the race with a concussion following an innocuous crash. To make matters worse, both Geraint Thomas and Carlos Rodriguez found themselves the wrong side of the decisive split, losing early GC time to the likes of Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard. With more crashes taking down the likes of Thomas himself and Connor Swift in the days since and Rodriguez slipping even further back in the GC, the team now have to refocus and realign their goals.

"We lost a little bit of time in both of the first two finals, it's not big big time, but it's time," says DS Zak Dempster to Cycling Weekly. "We've now got to prioritise trying to get a stage win but also protecting the GC guys to still keep that dream alive. We had Samuel Watson up there in that group on stage one but we missed it with Geraint and Carlos which wasn't ideal, but at the same time it's about continuing to try and hit those key points a lot better."

"Obviously we were protecting Pippo for the first four days, but the Tour de France doesn't care or really mind how hard you've worked, or how great your strategy is," Dempster continues. "To be frank I think it's just good that he's ok. He's got a concussion but he'll come back at the right time and once his health is all ok. We know how serious head traumas are now so we need to be respectful of it and we'll see what the next goals are for him, but I'm sure he'll be back and stronger than ever."

"The approach now is offensive racing, when the win is on the line," the DS concludes. "On stage four, I see that as an Ardennes style stage, so Axel Laurance is probably the only real guy for that, it might be GC, and then after that, given how hard this first block has been, post TT I think we'll then see the race much more open and more breakaways going to the line. For that I think we've got weapons that can be successful."