Egan Bernal rode on to the Champs Élysées to become the first Colombian to win the Tour de France with his teammate and defending champion, Geraint Thomas, and his Ineos team chief, Dave Brailsford, expecting the 22-year-old to dominate the sport for years to come.
“It’s the first of many,” Thomas said. “Egan’s just been improving all the time and was born to go uphill fast. He is a phenomenal athlete. He has the best team around him to support him and he has many great years ahead. He’s got good support with his family. He’s a humble guy with a very bright future.”
Brailsford believes the youthful Bernal still has room for improvement. “He might progress, we don’t know. But there are a lot of areas that he can improve, that’s for sure, and not just in pure power terms. Like for like, at his age, he’s pretty exceptional compared to everybody else.”
Bernal, who crossed the line in Paris behind stage winner Caleb Ewan from Australia, is the third-youngest winner of the Tour and his success makes him the seventh rider in eight years from a Brailsford-managed team to win the Tour. With Chris Froome now working to rehabilitate himself from injury and a disappointed Thomas desperate to return to his race-winning level of 2018, Ineos may have three leaders vying for supremacy on next year’s Tour start line in Nice.
“If all three of us are there on the start line – me, Froomey and Egan – jeez, we’re going to have some questions about leadership,” Thomas said. “But the other teams will have to answer those questions on the road. We’ve always been honest, clear and communicated with each other, so it will be great to have that strength next year.”
Brailsford rejected the suggestion that a switch in emphasis to supporting South American talent, such as Bernal and the probable new signing, Richard Carapaz, the Giro d’Italia champion from Ecuador, meant Ineos had deserted its roots.
“We very much have a British heart and we’ll continue flying the flagwith British riders,” he said. “But the reality is, it’s a global sport. To win the Tour de France, you want the best riders.” A Colombian rider with a Spanish coach, that’s a whole new challenge to do something we hadn’t done before. Can we make that succeed? That mentality isn’t a cut and paste.
“We are going to have to really think about Xabi [Artetxe] coaching and supporting him for him to get the best out of Egan and the guys. That’s why I went to Colombia in January. I thought, ‘Can we produce the culture that’s going to get the best out of them?’ rather than expecting them to adapt to our culture which is different.”
While Thomas acknowledged that he and Froome, both approaching their mid‑thirties, now faced competition from Brailsford’s collection of prodigious young talents, he was dismissive of those who are suggesting he is past his best.
“I don’t read it, although certain stuff filters through to me and spurs me on” he said. “I’m a lot closer to the end than the start: me and Egan are on separate spectrums but it’s great to be having this success.”
Second overall, after a battle for fitness, crashes and a lack of hard racing, was a significant result for Thomas. However intense his disappointment, he hid it well as, 12 months after his own success, Bernal was feted in Paris.
“I can be proud and satisfied I’ve done everything I could to try and be in the best shape,” he said. “There were a lot of doubters. It’s always nice to show what I can do and back it up. If someone else had won, it would be really disappointing, but Egan’s won and it’s amazing.”
Brailsford praised Thomas’s resilience despite the setbacks in his title defence. “Geraint’s ridden really well here, considering that a lot wrote him off after the winter,” he said. “This whole theory that he can’t win after the first time — he deserves a lot of credit for getting himself in the shape he did. Having missed the racing he was supposed to have, he’s done terrifically well.
“He was very close to winning this. He just had that little block in the middle where he could have stepped up and he could have been right up there.”