After Egan Bernal’s impressive summit finish ride to Tagliacozzo in the Giro d’Italia, Ineos Grenadiers are ‘hoping to do damage’ with the Colombian on the next big challenge over the strade bianche of Tuscany on Sunday, says sports director Zak Dempster.
Ineos Grenadiers’ determination to make a mark with Bernal on Sunday is partly due to his long history of success in off-road racing as well as his strong form.
A former double junior MTB World Championships medallist, Bernal also finished third in his sole participation in Strade Bianche, back in 2021. But the most important references for his off-road capabilities surely come from the Giro that year.
En route to overall victory, Bernal not only won on an unpaved finish at Campo Felice, but on a very similar off-road stage through Tuscany a few days later, he concluded the day as the best-placed of all the GC favourites. Other contenders like Remco Evenepoel, who lost over two minutes to Bernal, had much more difficult rides.
After clinching both Colombian national titles, Bernal was looking to be in the thick of the gravel action again in his first European race of 2025, the Clásica de Jaén, but fell late on during the race and broke his collarbone. After a fast recovery, as Dempster pointed out, his strong ride on the Tagliacozzo, finishing third, means Bernal has got “a great confidence boost”.
“He started 2025 really well and then he had that crash with the collarbone, which meant that he was fighting to get the confidence back that he had at the Nationals,” Dempster told Cyclingnews at the stage 8 start.
“He couldn’t get it back in Catalunya, because at the same time it [the collarbone] was still half-broken. But then on the [Giro stage 7] final climb, finally, he’s got a great confidence boost.
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“It’s a climb that suited the Egan of old, so to see him as snappy as he was leaves us in a relatively confident place for the mountain stages.”
Regarding the Giro d’Italia’s gravel stage, Dempster views Bernal’s chances as very good, as much because of his personality as a team leader, as because of his technical skills in off-road racing.
“Egan’s a pure bike racer and a pure leader, right down to the way he manages the team in terms of letting us know what he needs and when.
“So with those characteristics, we have everything we need in a stage like tomorrow.
We’re hatching plans, hopefully to be in the right place at the right time tomorrow, and then hopefully we can do some damage.”
Ineos Grenadiers have done some full recons of the Strade stage route, Dempster said, with both sports director Imanol Erviti and coach Dario Cioni – both present on the Giro – going to check it out after Tirreno-Adriatico this spring. It’s not just about the management and planning, either.
As Dempster says, when it comes to off-road one-day style racing, the squad also has some serious firepower to help back Bernal, currently lying 14th at 46 seconds behind race leader Primoz Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe), too.
“People forget how critical Bern Turner has been for us in the Classics, in E3, for example, he really put the other teams on the back foot. Josh Tarling is one of those up-and-coming Classics stars, too; he’s more than capable in these sorts of stages. We’ve got a very solid team for this.
“Normally, on sterrata at some point there’s a big GC acceleration, so we’ll just see who’s doing what and we make a decision about how we play it.
“If we’re on the front foot, there’ll be allies too, and if we’re on the back foot, there’s always someone there that has the same interests as well. But the key thing is to get into the first sector in a good position, and then you can start racing, right?”
Dempster is categorical, in any case, about how big a stage the Giro’s encounter with 29 kilometres of off-road en route to the same finish in Siena as is used in Strade Bianche will be. It’s not just about limiting losses, he says, and trying to stay out of trouble, but one where riders could go on the attack, too.
“It’s a stage where you can win some GC time and lose some GC time,” he insists. “It’s as critical as some of the Giro’s mountain stages in the second and third week, if not more.”
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