{"id":192266,"date":"2023-03-10T10:00:03","date_gmt":"2023-03-10T10:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/?p=192266"},"modified":"2023-03-09T15:16:05","modified_gmt":"2023-03-09T15:16:05","slug":"egan-bernals-uncertain-tour-de-france-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2023\/03\/10\/egan-bernals-uncertain-tour-de-france-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Egan Bernal\u2019s Uncertain Tour de France Future"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Between 2012 and 2019, Ineos Grenadiers and their previous version, Team Sky, won 8 of 9 Tour de France GCs, an unprecedented series of yellow jersey victories. They had the best team, the best strategy and the best leaders. The team\u2019s last Ineos rider to win the Tour was Egan Bernal.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Bernal was a phenomenon. He was the first South American cyclist to win the Tour and, at 22 years and 196 days of age, the second youngest since 1909. It was easy to believe that Ineos\u2019 Tour winning streak would continue for several more years with Bernal in the saddle. But he dropped out of the 2020 Tour because of a back injury, was plagued by injuries the next year and in 2022, he rode into the back of a stationary bus at high speed during a training run and was so badly injured that doctors feared he would die or end up paralyzed. His return to racing later in the year was considered something of a miracle.<\/p>\n<p>Bernal\u2019s aim has always remained winning the Tour again, and his team has backed him without reservation. However, a crash in the first stage of the 2023 Vuelta a San Juan, in his native Colombia, forced him to pull out of the race several stages later with an injured knee, and he has been sidelined ever since, casting doubt on his participation in the Tour this year.<\/p>\n<p>Now Ineos <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingnews.com\/news\/ineos-grenadiers-confirm-egan-bernals-return-to-racing-in-europe-in-late-march\/\">has announced<\/a> that Bernal will return to racing in Europe at the end of March and could be at the start of the Tour on July 1. \u201cEgan will be back in Europe pretty soon and so, hopefully, he&#8217;ll be racing at the end of the month,&#8221; team manager Rod Ellingworth said. \u201cEgan&#8217;s eager to race but often with these guys, you\u2019ve got to hold him back.\u201d If Bernal does make it to the Tour, what role will he have, considering the fact that he will have lost nearly two months of competitive racing?<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/Eganbernal\/status\/1630595814589431809<\/p>\n<p>When Ineos spoke publicly in January about its possible strategy for the Tour, the team\u2019s sports director, Steve Cummings, said that Ineos could have three leaders in the Tour, Bernal, Carlos Rodriguez and Dani Martinez. \u201cIt\u2019ll be Dani, potentially Egan, and Carlos [as the leaders] in the Tour,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingweekly.com\/racing\/ineos-grenadiers-spanish-speaking-tour-de-france-trident-bernal-martinez-and-rodriguez\">Cummings said,<\/a> adding that this strategy was not carved in stone. \u201cThe season\u2019s long, lots of things can happen, [and] January\u2019s too early to be so specific about it, but that\u2019s our current plan. In May, we will have a much clearer idea of the specifics, how we\u2019ll approach it, and how many riders we\u2019ll protect.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, a month later, after Bernal had suffered the knee injury, the strategy changed. \u201cDani [Martinez] is our main focus for the Tour at the moment,\u201d Ellingworth told Cyclingnews at the Volta ao Algarve, which the 26-year-old Martinez won to take the third stage-race victory of his career, after the Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9 in 2020 and Itzulia Basque Country last year. &#8220;With Egan,\u201d Ellingworth added, \u201cI&#8217;m not putting any expectations on him at all. I think that would be unfair. He will have his own expectations because that&#8217;s how driven he is. But you can&#8217;t say anything about the Tour yet. It&#8217;s totally open.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, questions must be asked about Bernal\u2019s future as a top cyclist. He has repeatedly declared that he wants to race in the Tour this year and wants to win it again. But has he become too injury-prone to race competitively against the likes of Tadej Poga\u010dar, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2023\/01\/04\/vingegaard-on-winning-the-tour-you-sometimes-feel-like-a-circus-monkey\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jonas Vingegaard<\/a> and, eventually, Mathieu van der Poel? And will the injuries he suffered in Colombia prevent him from ever reaching his best level again? And, finally, was his 2019 Tour victory a one-off, against riders not on the level with his current rivals? Co-team leader Geraint Thomas finished second to the Colombian in that race, with Jumbo-Visma\u2019s Steven Kruijswijk finishing third.<\/p>\n<p>Until those questions are definitively answered, Bernal continues to receive the full support of his team. \u201cYou can&#8217;t fault what he has done,\u201d Ellingworth said. \u201cIt&#8217;s pretty phenomenal where he is. He sends me videos and updates of what he&#8217;s doing in training and he couldn&#8217;t be doing any more, to be honest. We&#8217;re running with him, giving him every opportunity, backing him 100%.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Every cycling fan should cross their fingers and wish Egan Bernal the best of luck in his comeback. Grand Tour racing in general, and the Tour de France in particular, can only benefit from having another healthy elite rider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Between 2012 and 2019, Ineos Grenadiers and their previous version, Team Sky, won 8 of 9 Tour de France GCs, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":192268,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[329],"tags":[4352,2621,4367,433],"global-categories":[3366],"class_list":["post-192266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-road-cycling","tag-dani-martinez","tag-egan-bernal","tag-ineos-grenadiers","tag-tour-de-france","global-categories-cycling"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.3 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Egan Bernal\u2019s Uncertain Tour de France Future - 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