Until the accident in January 2022 Egan Bernal was one of the best cyclists in the world and is expected to be the top leader of the Ineos team in major competitions in the future.. However, this unfortunate event that occurred during training on Colombian streets was not just that It stopped his drive to continue competing among the best cyclists in the world and also took away his visibility within your own team.
When there is now talk of the possible arrival of a great cyclist at Ineos to be able to fight against the jumbo-visma of Jonas Vingegaard and Primoz Roglic, Many understand it as something negative and that it reflects a lack of trust in Colombians in the past. Nothing is confirmed yet, but among fans and the Colombian press he is seen as someone who will take Egan’s place.
The accident caused Bernal will go from winner of the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia in 2023 to 36th in the Tour and 55th in the Vuelta. Likewise, Ineos went from a team that had won at least one of the year’s three major races since 2015 (between 2015 and 2019, when it was Team Sky) to a team that achieved its best result in 2022 with second place at the Giro (Richard Carapaz) and 2023 (Geraint Thomas).
Egan Bernal will remain alone until 2024
After the season is completed in 2023 The British team’s movements and departures became known, many due to contract termination and others due to a change decision. But it is known that Egan Bernal will remain and that is why he began to fight very alone.
The Colombian is among those who will change the squad by 2024 Daniel Felipe Martínez is moving to Bora-Hansgrohe, Tao Geoghegan Hart is moving to Lidl-Trek, Pavel Sivakov is moving to UAE Team Emirates and Ben Tulett is moving to Jumbo-Visma. And it was mentioned that there would also be departures in the business and technical parts, but only Ben Williams, who was one of the big players in performance and nutrition, was let go.
Little by little, Bernal noticed that the team he knew how to take to the top of the major competitions was beginning to weaken and was losing important pieces after returning to the streets and aiming to be the same as before.
Tadej Pogacar or Primoz Roglic? Rumors that should reach Egan Bernal’s team
Although it is not confirmed, Tadej Pogacar’s own representative accepted that there were contacts from Ineos to have the Slovenian who was champion of the Tour de France in 2020 and 2021, second in the same French race in 2022 and 2023 and additionally third at the Vuelta in 2019. So Alex Carera spoke for MARCA in Spain to clarify what Ineos should do to enter into this contract:
“Ineos called me to get interested in Pogacar. They asked me if I was a free agent and I said no, Who has a contract? “If they want to sign him, they have to talk to Mauro Gianetti (UAE Team Emirates).”
Should this situation develop further and the Slovenian manages to team up with the Colombian, there could be hope that Ineos will be the protagonist again, but in some Colombian media everything has been reported as something that could jeopardize Egan Bernal and send him to the league would banish second row.
Although Primoz Roglic had no influence on the Colombian media and MARCA was also able to establish in Europe that the current Jumbo Visma driver is happy in his team a possible merger of Jumbo-Visma with Soudal Quick-Step would bring together many bosses and strong names (Jonas Vingegaard, Roglic, Sepp Kuss, Wout Van Aert or Remco Evenepoel) and that would make Roglic think about Ineos.
The Belgian portal WielerFlits has released this latest version and it has not gone unnoticed. However, Luca Guercilena spoke as manager of Lidl-Trek and accepted that they also had their eye on Roglic:
The issue is complex and from different angles: some will believe that Egan Bernal has lost support at Ineos and it is good that important names are coming in, but others will believe that they are already looking for a replacement for the Colombian Face of the future. Everything is in the air.
