Rewind six months, and Netcompany Ineos’ Tour de France project looked genuinely exciting. They’d signed one of the most exciting young GC riders – a British one, at that – as well as a rising French star, both of whom had finished in the top 10 of the 2025 Tour.

Add those two riders to the team’s existing climbers, their wealth of experience in winning Grand Tours, and their top-tier resources and you had a winning formula, right? Well, wrong, because like many best-laid plans, things aren’t looking as promising as they were six months ago.

The team’s star signings, Oscar Onley and Kévin Vauquelin, had a great start to the year at the Volta ao Algarve, kicking off enthusiasm about what Ineos were hoping to achieve this year. But since then, their fortunes seem to have waned.

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Onley’s torrid year reached its zenith this week when the team confirmed that he wouldn’t ride the Tour at all, still struggling with a “significant” shoulder injury sustained in a truly horrible crash at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.

Even if it didn’t look like Onley was at the level that delivered him to fourth last year anyway, losing him is a big blow nonetheless, both for the team and for his confidence, which seems to have been shaken by the difficult months he’s had.

At the time of writing, we believe Kévin Vauquelin is going to start the Tour, but he’s been hit with illness in the run-up and his year hasn’t exactly been a breeze, either. He hasn’t suffered quite the same bad luck as Onley but he hasn’t excelled, either. Based on his results and the stacked competition starting the race in Barcelona, for now it looks like he would have to make a big jump to repeat his top 10 finish from last year.

So where do Netcompany Ineos stand? Before the Giro d’Italia, when they welcomed new title sponsor Netcompany, the team were clear about their long-term goal: to return to the top step of the Tour de France podium – and not just one day, but within the next five years, they emphasised.

Of course, this is only year one, the very beginning of their project, and no one said they were going to win the Tour this year. But for a team that wants to win this race by 2031, you’d hope to at least be challenging for the top 10 in 2026, and for the moment, it’s not certain that they will.

Who will step up this year?

Right now, Ineos have an immediate challenge on their hands. Who is going to step up and make a success of their Tour de France this year? Long-term goals aside, the team have a flashy new sponsor who want results and visibility at the biggest race on the planet, be it on GC or elsewhere. If they’re not going to be battling for the GC, they need to be battling for stage wins. Unfortunately, bad luck for a few riders won’t really cut it as a reason to not deliver at the Tour.

So who can do that? Obviously, a lot of hopes will still be on Vauquelin, especially whilst we don’t know how bad his illness was or how it might affect him. His fearless and consistent riding earned him seventh overall last year whilst riding for a smaller team, Arkéa B&B Hotels. So there is hope that if he feels well, he could still be fighting for the top 10.

Vauquelin’s results so far in 2026 haven’t been overly impressive, with 15th at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes on his most recent outing, but in fairness the good results that he enjoyed before the Tour last year were largely in smaller races. He’s raced a much more ambitious programme this season, and not quite delivered, but that’s not to say the French fervour couldn’t spur him on to find some magic in his legs.

If he’s not in GC-challenging form, Vauquelin should readjust quickly and at least try and go for a stage on one of the early tough days. Paul Seixas will take a lot of the French pressure off his shoulders, but there’s still a lot of expectation on Vauquelin.

Though we’ve spent most of the year talking about Onley and Vauquelin, the riders Ineos signed for the Tour, let’s not forget the riders they already had who can also compete on the hardest stages.

Thymen Arensman won two of the toughest stages of the Tour last year, and he’s only been demoted from leadership duty for the Tour because he was targeting the Giro d’Italia this year – it’s not because he isn’t capable of a GC campaign if he’s willing and able.

He finished fourth overall at the Giro, and whilst that will have taken a lot of his energy, he’s done two Grand Tours in a year before so it’s not like he’s coming to the Tour with totally empty legs. The third week TT works in his favour, too, given his strength in the discipline, and if he comes good whilst other riders fall away, he could replicate a good GC result.

The Dutchman has flown under the radar amidst the Onley-Vauquelin focus, but – like he was last year – he could end up being Ineos’ secret sauce.

There’s also Carlos Rodríguez who, yes, hasn’t quite replicated the level that saw him finish fifth overall and win a big stage in 2023, but that doesn’t mean he should be written off entirely. He’s had consistent if not stand-out results this year, and certainly has the Grand Tour experience.

If the mountains and GC battle fail, Ineos can always hold onto hope that Filippo Ganna might deliver, either in the TTT or the individual effort on stage 16: Newly crowned Polish TT champion Michal Kwiatkowski, who never seems to age, could be in with a chance of a vintage stage victory.

Amongst the new signings for 2026, Dorian Godon has proved to be a real success story as well. With five WorldTour stage wins this season, as well as a long spell in the lead in the Volta a Catalunya, Godon’s versatility in punchier terrain has earned the Frenchman some impressive victories this season, including the opening prologue of the Tour de Romandie.

So, given how Ineos have improved on capitalising on chances, racing more aggressively and winning more often, it does seem unlikely that their race will be a total wash, but it also doesn’t look likely to reach the heights they hoped for at the start of the year.

The bigger picture – or bigger problem?

Whether Netcompany Ineos can still pull of a 2026 Tour or not, though, questions still remain over the feasibility of their stated aims.

Both Onley and Vauquelin are still young and they obviously have a whole lot of room to grow, but it must also be said that we’re in an era where GC contenders don’t tend to grow into it – riders like Pogačar, Vingegaard and Del Toro were very good, very quickly. Is it even possible to grow into being a Grand Tour winner over five years, or is it a case of you either have it at 21 or you don’t?

With Onley and Vauquelin, everything is of course pure speculation, and particularly in Onley’s case a year of crashes and illness doesn’t erase the raw talent he clearly has, which delivered him to fourth last year with very little team support. But in pro cycling there is so little time to falter, that it does feel like this one off year could make a dent in his long-term chances as a Tour winner.

The other question for Ineos is whether their project is as future-looking as it needs to be. We know that they were a highly effective Grand Tour team in the past, finessing the mountain train tactic and delivering their riders to

So what have Ineos done to move into the future and this new era? Well, they have a fancy new sponsor who promises to use AI to help them win – even if most other big teams are already well on the AI train – but in terms of personnel, their leadership looks notably nostalgic.

Dave Brailsford is back as team principal, Geraint Thomas is head of racing, and they’ve got former riders in the team cars as sports directors. Their staffing is full of people who helped them win the Tour last decade, but that’s the operative phrase: last decade.

Despite their good recruitment moves and injection of sponsor cash, the team is still looking somewhat stuck in the past, hoping that what worked 10 years ago will work now, and we know very, very well by now that it just won’t.

In Onley and Vauquelin, as well as Arensman, they have fresh, talented and high-potential riders. It might not have worked out this year, but there is still time for them to get back on track and harness the talent of their riders to work towards that lofty Tour de France-winning goal. They just need to do it in the modern way, not the way of 10 years ago – and with 2026 already partly scratched off, at least for Onley, they’ll need to do it fast.

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