INEOS's best GT Team

poptart242

Inspired by another thread, your thoughts on their best available lineup as of the start of next year below please.

NB: I'm leaving out the politics of having 4.5 leaders in there for Dave B to deal with!

My thoughts:

Leader: Bernal
Backup Leader: Froome*

Rouleurs & Mid-Mountains: Rowe (captain), Van Baarle, Dennis, Castroviejo

Climbers: Carapaz, Thomas

*purely based on his injury, I think his best days are done

Toughest one was leaving Kwiato out for me but a bad season there coupled with Castroviejo's power in a TTT gives him the edge. Honourable mentions for Hart, Sosa and Moscon.

blazing_saddles

Hard to be these as a best available line up:

Tom Dumoulin
Primož Roglič
Steven Kruijswijk
Wout van Aert
Tony Martin
Mike Teunissen
Dylan Groenewegen
Laurens De Plus

specialgueststar

Funny how Thomas is considered a climber now. I'd say Carapaz is second and Dr Chris Frooman demoted to last on the mountain train A CHOO aCHOO

kingstongraham

Given that the best team is always going to be aimed at the TDF, why you worried about performance in a TTT?

poptart242

kingstongraham said:

Given that the best team is always going to be aimed at the TDF, why you worried about performance in a TTT?

I wouldn't say I was as such, but the guys like Castro and Dennis are monsters in both disciplines, so versatile.

poptart242

blazing_saddles said:

Hard to be these as a best available line up:

Tom Dumoulin
Primož Roglič
Steven Kruijswijk
Wout van Aert
Tony Martin
Mike Teunissen
Dylan Groenewegen
Laurens De Plus

Halfway through writing this I was thinking I'd *love* to see what damage yellow lotto could do with their best squad. If it's purely aimed at GC I'd chuck little George Bennett in there in place of Groenewegen.

pnev

MVDP
7 other riders

- Every category

phreak

Surely Carapaz hasn't signed on to be a domestique, so you'd imagine he's going to target the Giro, and given it seems overkill to have 3 Tour winners in one squad, you'd imagine Thomas would as well. Give one of the younger guys like Sosa or Sivakov super domestique duties for the Tour ala Bernal in 2018.

The bigger challenge will be getting Kwia and Moscon back on form, as they were well off the pace in the race this year, as indeed were all of their domestiques apart from van Baarle.

m.r.m.

Kwiatkowski has been doing cyclocross over the winter. I think more and more are going that path after seeing the form WVA and MvdP bring into the road season. I'm optimistic for him for 2020.

andyp

m.r.m. said:

Kwiatkowski has been doing cyclocross over the winter. I think more and more are going that path after seeing the form WVA and MvdP bring into the road season. I'm optimistic for him for 2020.

He's done one local Polish race, which isn't UCI ranked, as far as I'm aware.

m.r.m.

Ok maybe I got fooled by the pics on social media.

Pross

Can't be bothered to start a new thread but thought some of you might be interested in the documentary on BBC Wales this Thursday Geraint Thomas: The Road Will Decide https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000cjbj

If you're outside Wales and on Sky then you should be able to find the channel up in the high 900s after the channels you pretend you don't watch! I assume it will be on iPlayer too.

rick_chasey

poptart242 said:

blazing_saddles said:

Hard to be these as a best available line up:

Tom Dumoulin
Primož Roglič
Steven Kruijswijk
Wout van Aert
Tony Martin
Mike Teunissen
Dylan Groenewegen
Laurens De Plus

Halfway through writing this I was thinking I'd *love* to see what damage yellow lotto could do with their best squad. If it's purely aimed at GC I'd chuck little George Bennett in there in place of Groenewegen.

If you don't have Groenewegen why bother having Teunissen in? For pure GC you'd chuck both out and stick in Tolhoek and either Gesink or Sep Kuss.

poptart242

My thinking is along the lines of Teunissen is a solid enough classics guy too, so you'd keep him there for some Roulering duties. Groenewegen doesn't give you that, and surely there's enough climbers in there already.