“We do not want to be passengers” - INEOS Tour de France plans overhauled as Geraint Thomas looks to salvage hopes after Onley blow and Rodriguez snub

There is no hiding the scale of the reset at Netcompany INEOS. The team that will roll down the start ramp in Barcelona is not the team they expected to send to the Tour de France when Oscar Onley was signed, built up and positioned as their new Grand Tour spearhead.

Onley’s absence changes the race before it begins. Fourth overall last year and the headline arrival of the winter, he was the obvious point around which INEOS could build a clear GC plan.

Instead, after his crash at the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes, they arrive without him, without Carlos Rodriguez, and without the kind of single protected leader that once defined the team’s Tour identity.

What remains is still dangerous. Thymen Arensman, Egan Bernal, Tobias Foss, Filippo Ganna, Dorian Godon, Michal Kwiatkowski, Josh Tarling and Kevin Vauquelin make up an eight-man selection with huge power against the clock, proven Grand Tour pedigree and several riders capable of winning from different race situations. It is not the cleanest INEOS Tour plan. It may be one of their more unpredictable.

The most revealing decision is not only Onley’s forced absence, but Rodriguez’s omission. INEOS could have kept another recent Tour top-10 finisher in the eight after losing their planned leader. Instead, the final selection leans heavily towards the Barcelona team time trial, stage wins and flexibility across the first half of the race.

Rodriguez was eighth at the Tour in 2023 and seventh in 2024, but he will not be on the start line this time. Speaking during the team’s presentation press conference, Geraint Thomas made clear that the Spaniard’s exclusion was not a simple call.

“It was a very difficult decision to leave Rodriguez out,” Thomas said. “It was a question of overall balance and managing the team for every terrain. A question of team objectives. Obviously it wasn’t easy for me, but he remains a very important rider for us and has an important role in the team. He is an important part of this team’s ambitions. He will certainly be disappointed, but it was a choice made because of the balance of the team.”

That balance is clear enough from the names. Ganna, Tarling, Foss and Kwiatkowski give INEOS one of the strongest engine rooms in the race. Arensman, fourth at the Giro d’Italia and a double mountain stage winner at last year’s Tour, offers a route into the high mountains without needing to be boxed into a three-week GC burden. Bernal brings experience and climbing depth after his own Giro, while Vauquelin starts as last year’s seventh-place finisher, albeit after illness disrupted his final approach.

Onley was supposed to simplify things. He gave INEOS a young British GC leader, a recent Tour top-four finish and a clear story for the first summer of the Netcompany era. His injury has left the team trying to turn a damaged plan into something more fluid. “Onley did not have the chance to show himself,” Thomas said. “He has to look ahead now. We cannot think about what could have been, and we are making new objectives and plans.”

Those new objectives look very different from the old INEOS blueprint. There is no promise of controlling the race in the mountains, no insistence that the yellow jersey is the only measure of success, and no attempt to pretend that Pogacar and Vingegaard are not starting from a different place in the hierarchy.

Thomas still pushed back against the idea that INEOS are heading to France to follow. In the team’s own announcement, he set out the tone of the new approach. “We didn't come to this Tour to follow the race - we came to shape it,” said Thomas. “This is a group with real versatility, and every rider has earned their place. We’ve got experience, firepower, and the freedom to race aggressively. Fortune favours the brave and we’re going to give it everything.”

That freedom may suit this particular eight better than a defensive GC brief. Arensman has already shown he can win Tour mountain stages when given room. Ganna and Tarling turn any time trial into an obvious target. Kwiatkowski and Godon add options for rougher, harder-to-control days. Foss gives another layer of time-trial quality and all-round strength.

The opening team time trial now carries even more weight for INEOS. It was always going to matter, but the final selection makes it look like a central part of their Tour rather than just an early opportunity.

With Ganna, Tarling, Foss and Kwiatkowski in the same unit, INEOS should be among the teams watched most closely in Barcelona. A strong ride would immediately put the reshuffled squad on the front foot. A missed opportunity would leave the Tour waiting for the mountain breakaways and longer-range moves that Thomas is already hinting at.

“Given the way the guys can race, we have the ambition to win in the short term,” Thomas explained. “Even though we know that at the moment we do not have a favourite for the race. For now, winning is what counts for us and we are targeting stages. We do not want to be passengers in the race, but protagonists, and we will race with that outlook and mentality.”

That is the clearest version of the new INEOS message. They are not selling Onley’s absence as a minor inconvenience. They are not pretending Rodriguez’s omission is insignificant. They are asking this team to find a different route through the Tour: hit the opening TTT, chase stages, keep Vauquelin and Arensman alive where possible, and avoid becoming scenery while the yellow jersey fight forms around others.

Thomas was careful not to set a fixed target for the number of wins. Race circumstances, and the way Pogacar and Vingegaard shape the Tour, will dictate too much for that. But he did not lower the demand for impact.

“We want to win as much as possible, clearly,” he said. “For us though, the most important thing will be to be active and protagonists. From there, we will see what the result is, also depending on what Pogacar and Vingegaard do. We cannot say, for example, that we are targeting three stages, because race circumstances can be different, but we will try to win as much as possible.”

INEOS once arrived at the Tour with the race built around them. This time, they arrive trying to rebuild themselves inside it. Barcelona will show quickly whether the power in this selection can become an early weapon, or whether Onley’s absence and Rodriguez’s omission leave them chasing the race from the start.