Wurf had to sacrifice important Ironmans for INEOS: "I don't want to be one of those riders who..."

Wurf doesn’t beat around the bush: 2024 wasn’t the best year for INEOS. "It’s a tricky thing. The past few years haven’t gone too well. There are still successes, but compared to winning the Tour, it’s seen as a failure. Our guys are getting publicly criticized, and that does bother me. As a team, we need to figure out how to get the most out of the athletes."

"After so much success, you tend to keep working the same way, but other teams have changed quite a bit in their preparation. So, we need to modernize and break a bit from the past. I don’t mean copying others, but rather trying to lead the way again. Though, there has been some sheer bad luck, with the crashes of Egan Bernal and Chris Froome," he rightly points out.

"We have the group and staff for it. Take Magnus Sheffield: he’s always reading, learning and improving himself. I’ve never done that — I’ve always surrounded myself with people who are good at that. But I’m certain we can bounce back," the experienced Aussie believes.

Then there’s the Tom Pidcock situation, where there was talk of a potential departure for some time. "Tom has focused on things other than winning the Tour: he’s now, at his age, won gold at the Olympics for the second time. Q36.5 made sense since the owner of that clothing brand also owns Pinarello. And they could build a team around him like Van der Poel has with Alpecin-Deceuninck. But he remains one of the riders who can win races for INEOS Grenadiers."

Wurf himself also noticed things didn’t always go smoothly within the team and shared a few personal examples. "I did fewer Ironmans this year because I was called upon at different times. I wanted to compete in the Ironman in Frankfurt after good summer training and was just preparing for a week of rest before the race when the team called and told me I needed to go to the Tour of Poland."

"I replied that there was an important Ironman coming up, but they repeated that they needed me. Then I said, fair enough, I don’t want to be one of those riders who doesn’t want to go to a race because I want to work on something else," he explains. "I’m on the payroll, so in the end, I didn’t do that Ironman and rode Poland and the Tour of Germany after the four hardest training weeks of my life."

"Earlier in the season, there was also the Ironman in South Africa. I did the Amstel Gold Race and Flèche Wallonne and then flew straight to South Africa, where I still managed to place third. My energy ran out at the end, which was understandable considering that week. Within an hour after the race, I was asleep, even though I’d consumed a total of 1,000 milligrams of caffeine because I was so tired," he laughs. "But I fulfilled my role in the team because I’m part of the team. I do my job and want to be an example for others. If I start saying I don’t want to do this or that, I’d be setting a bad example."