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The death of strategist Nicolás Portal and the egos of cyclists like Geraint Thomas, go against the wishes of the Colombian champion
The first blow that INEOS suffered in this 2020 season was on March 3. The team’s strategist, architect of the hegemony, the dictatorship that the team imposed in the past decade, died in Andorra at the age of 40. A heart attack took him away. The blow to Egan was terrible. He was the man who gave the orders, the one who created a preparation and an execution of career plans that made that team the most powerful in the world. Between 2011 and 2020, Sky won all the Tours except the 2014 one when Vicenzo Nibali took advantage of a series of retreats -among which Froome’s was included- to put up the Italian flag.
Without Portal the English team is missing the head, the man who could convince Geraint Thomas, as he did last year, to work for Egan Bernal. Without Portal, Thomas could choose to go racing in the Giro d’Italia because, as he said, at 34 he no longer has many options to win a great lap again. Froome will go to the Vuelta and if both Brits did not run the Tour it is because they were not going to work for Egan.
How envious of Roglic! he has a super champion like Dumoulin working for him without any envy. The Jumbo is complete for him. Instead this is a kind of version B of INEOS, banking. Yesterday, at dinner after Stage 13, there was a thunderous silence. No one spoke to each other. Two kilometers from the finish line, Egan Bernal was completely alone and the effort he made not to lose everything will surely pay for it. He couldn’t scream but his silence was eloquent. No one helped him and the planning was a complete disaster.
Is that with 10 kilometers to go, when it was not playing, INEOS took the lead to shoot while Jumbo saved. If Portal were alive, they wouldn’t fall into that obvious trap. With Egan missing five kilometers, only the unconditional Carapaz accompanied him. The rest had been wiped out. There was nothing left of INEOS.
Hopefully they can recover for the stages on Sunday and Tuesday, hopefully they will reach the tactic to stay on the podium. But the options to repeat the Tour are increasingly scarce, not only because of Egan’s lack of legs, but because the team is broken.
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