INEOS Grenadiers Confirm Roubaix Squad: Ganna Leads, Welsford and Swift Anchor Cobbled Title Bid
INEOS Grenadiers have officially confirmed their seven-rider line-up for Sunday's Paris-Roubaix, with Italian time trial world champion Filippo Ganna heading a squad designed to deliver the team's first Hell of the North podium since 2022. Joining Ganna in the British outfit's cobbled assault are Australian sprint star Sam Welsford, German all-rounder Kim Heiduk, Briton Connor Swift, fellow Briton Samuel Watson, Russian neo-pro Artem Shmidt and Belgian Ben Turner.
Ganna's selection had never been in doubt — the Italian engine has built his entire spring around peaking for the cobbles after an intensive recon block on the pavé in late March that even produced viral footage of him violently shaken on the five-star sectors. Now 28, Ganna has spoken openly about Roubaix being the Monument that obsesses him most, and the British squad have built his entire 2026 calendar around delivering him to Compiègne in optimum form. His February interview in which he declared that "Roubaix is the only race I dream about" set the tone for a winter of dedicated cobbles preparation.
"Pippo is in the best Classics shape of his career," team principal John Allert told Italian outlet TuttoBiciWeb on Wednesday. "We have given him everything he asked for — the recon days, the equipment programme, the dedicated team. He has earned this opportunity through the work he has done since November. Now it is up to him to take it. We believe he can win."
The selection of Sam Welsford is the most eye-catching piece of the puzzle. The Australian — better known as one of the fastest pure sprinters in the WorldTour — has been gradually expanding his Classics repertoire, and was a surprise inclusion on the start sheet at Gent-Wevelgem last month, where he finished a respectable 14th. INEOS clearly view him as both a sprint Plan B in case the race comes back together and a useful battering ram on the early flat cobbles before the Trouée d'Arenberg.
Connor Swift returns to Roubaix for a sixth consecutive year as the senior road captain. The Yorkshireman, cousin of Ineos team-mate Ben Swift, has the most starts of any rider in the squad and will be the on-road tactician guiding Ganna through the early sections. Watson, runner-up at the 2023 U23 Paris-Roubaix and increasingly seen as a long-term cobbles project for the team, gets his second senior Hell of the North start after a strong showing at Dwars door Vlaanderen in March.
Heiduk, the German fast finisher whose late-race power has earned him a niche role in cobbled finales, completes a balanced set of riders capable of fragmenting the peloton in the middle phase of the race. Ben Turner, who has raced four previous Roubaixs without ever quite breaking through, returns after his recent good form at Across Flanders. The selection of 21-year-old Artem Shmidt is the most controversial — the Russian neo-pro has never raced Roubaix before but has impressed the team with his recovery and bike-handling on cobbles in Belgian one-day races.
Tactically, INEOS are not expected to chase the breakaway in the opening 100 kilometres. Instead, they will preserve Ganna for the long, fast cobbled sectors of the second half — the kind of terrain where his sustained 500-watt threshold over five-star sectors can isolate even the strongest of rivals. Whether that strategy is enough to beat Pogacar, Van der Poel and a relentless field of cobbled specialists remains to be seen — but on Sunday morning at the Place du Général de Gaulle, INEOS Grenadiers will line up convinced that Ganna's day at the velodrome has finally arrived.