Three weeks after Rod Ellingworth announced his resignation as deputy team principal of the Ineos Grenadiers, the British team has announced a raft of personnel appointments to management roles, headlined by a new CEO.
John Allert, who had been serving as managing director, is moving into the position of CEO of the Ineos Grenadiers. The change will see him reporting to Dave Brailsford, the longtime team boss who has since moved up in the wider Ineos Sport organization, and Jean-Claude Blanc, whose résumé includes stints at football clubs Paris Saint-Germain and Juventus. (Ineos Sport and owner Jim Ratcliffe are finalizing a bid to buy a 25% stake in Manchester United, a move that has been in the works for months.)
Allert has been with the Ineos Grenadiers since 2022, a relatively short period of time compared to other Ineos management figures like Brailsford or Ellingworth. Prior to working in cycling, Allert spent more than a decade in various roles with McLaren and McLaren Racing.
“This team has created an incredible and successful legacy, but our ambitions for the future are greater than ever,” Allert said in a statement from the team. “The strengthening of our performance team is perfectly aligned with these ambitions.”
Allert’s appointment was indeed one of several announced for the squad, with Scott Drawer named as performance director, former pro Steve Cummings appointed as Director of Racing, and former Movistar pro Imanol Erviti coming on as a sport director. Drawer, who has held roles in English rugby and as head of research and innovation at UK Sport, will fill the seat left by Ben Williams, who left to join the Queens Park Rangers football club. Cummings and Erviti, respectively, replace Roger Hammond and Matteo Tosatto.
Ineos has seen the single biggest management shakeup at a WorldTour team this offseason and will hope that the many behind-the-scenes changes can get the team back on track for success after several seasons that have not seen the organization achieve the same level of success it enjoyed during the 2010s. If Allert is, in fact, focused on ambitions that are “greater than ever,” he will need to lead a significant turnaround. The team formerly known as Sky won seven Tours de France in an eight-year period between 2012 and 2019, but has not won any Grand Tours since Egan Bernal triumphed at the 2021 Giro d’Italia.
The Colombian has since suffered a career-altering injury, and with the departure of GC hopefuls like Tao Geoghegan Hart and Geraint Thomas in the twilight of his career, Ineos’ Grand Tour chances are less assured than they have been in a decade or more. The team did not make too many huge splashes this transfer season either, with the biggest news items being departures instead of arrivals, as Geoghegan Hart is headed to Lidl-Trek, among other moves.
Allert and Co. will, however, still have the talents of Tom Pidcock and a few other notables in 2024, while Carlos Rodríguez, who rode to fifth in his first Tour appearance last year, seems like a rider the team will be building around in years to come.
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