Four Days Out From Rovereto, Ineos Grenadiers Name Egan Bernal And Thymen Arensman As Joint Leaders For A Tour Of The Alps That Will Serve As The Final Dress Rehearsal For A Giro d'Italia In Which The British Superteam Have Not Placed A Rider On The Podium Since 2021 — And The Innsbruck Finish Has Become The Race The Whole Peloton Is Watching
With four days to go before the Tour of the Alps rolls out of Rovereto on Monday 20 April, Ineos Grenadiers formally unveiled the seven-rider squad they will take into the final World Tour stage race before the Giro d'Italia at a press conference in Bolzano on Thursday morning. Egan Bernal and Thymen Arensman will share team leadership across the five-stage race, with the 2019 Tour de France winner wearing number one and the 26-year-old Dutchman wearing two. It is the most public co-leadership declaration the British team has made in four years and reflects what general manager John Allert described on Thursday as "a clear-eyed understanding of where we are in our Grand Tour cycle."
"We have not been on a Grand Tour podium since Geraint finished third at the Giro in 2023," Allert said. "That is three years without a Grand Tour podium for this team. We are not going to hide from that number. We are going to use this Tour of the Alps to find out which of our two leaders is in the best shape for the Giro in three weeks, and we are going to commit the team to that rider in Durango on 9 May." Bernal, who has spent the winter in Switzerland after completing his first full European off-season since 2021, arrives at the race having won the queen stage of the Itzulia Basque Country earlier this month on Arrate. Arensman is coming off a five-stage win and a fifth on general classification at the Vuelta a España last September.
The 2026 Tour of the Alps route, unveiled in February, contains 18,300 metres of climbing across five stages, an increase of 2,200 metres on last year's edition and the hardest Tour of the Alps route since the race was rebranded from the Giro del Trentino in 2017. Stage three ends atop the 9.4-kilometre Val di Funes climb at an average gradient of 8.1%, a finish the race has not used since 2019. Stage five concludes in Innsbruck with a four-kilometre circuit up the Hungerburg that will be ridden three times in the final 40 kilometres. Race director Maurizio Evangelista described the route on Thursday as "the closest simulation of the Giro's third week we have ever managed to construct in five days."
The broader start list confirms that the Tour of the Alps has become the most important pre-Giro reconnaissance race in the calendar. Jonas Vingegaard, whose presence was confirmed last month, will race for Visma-Lease a Bike in a squad that also contains climbing domestique Sepp Kuss. The race is Vingegaard's last competitive test before his Tour de France title defence begins in Barcelona on 4 July — he is not racing the Giro. Primož Roglič will lead Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe. The entire Lidl-Trek Giro squad, led by defending race champion Giulio Ciccone, is present. So, too, are Red Bull's Aleksandr Vlasov and Movistar's Enric Mas.
What the race will tell us is not primarily about who wins the overall — the Tour of the Alps has traditionally been a race in which the eventual Giro winner finishes in the top ten but rarely on the podium — but about form trajectory and team cohesion. Bernal's Ineos squad contains three confirmed Giro starters (Bernal, Arensman, and Argentinian climber Eduardo Sepúlveda) and four riders who will peel off for the Ardennes and the Vuelta a Asturias (Ben Tulett, Connor Swift, Ben Turner and Joshua Tarling). The team will ride the first three stages for Bernal, then re-evaluate on the morning of stage four. "If Thymen is three minutes up the road on stage three, we ride for Thymen on stage four," Allert said. "If Egan is three minutes up the road, we ride for Egan. That is how this week works."
Arensman, whose 2026 season has so far consisted of a seventh at UAE Tour, a fourth at Tirreno-Adriatico and a training block on Mount Teide, was visibly more relaxed on Thursday than at any point since his public December statement that he had "settled contract negotiations" with the team. "I am here to race," the Dutchman said. "Egan is my friend, he is my team captain, and if he is stronger than me I will ride for him. If I am stronger than him I trust the team to do the same for me. That is the arrangement we agreed in January. It is working." Arensman confirmed that his Giro build-up would continue with a 3,000-metre altitude camp in the Sierra Nevada from 23 April through to the morning of the Giro's grande partenza.
The race begins with a 152-kilometre stage from Rovereto to Trento on Monday 20 April, a finish that has produced sprint conclusions in three of the last five Tour of the Alps editions. Tuesday is the mid-mountain stage to Kaltern/Caldaro; Wednesday is the first summit finish on Val di Funes; Thursday is the double-ascent stage to Lienz; and Friday closes the race with the Innsbruck circuit finale. Live coverage begins on Eurosport and Discovery Sports+ at 14:30 CET each day. The 2026 Tour of the Alps is, as Vingegaard put it in his pre-race press briefing on Wednesday evening, "the race where you find out if your April has gone right or wrong."