Oscar Onley’s pre-race injury presaged three bleak weeks and new director of racing knows he has his work cut out

Crashes, punctures and injuries ensured that the 2026 Tour de France campaign was one of the worst for the beleaguered Netcompany Ineos team. From the first stage, when Dave Brailsford’s team came close to winning the team time trial in Montjuic, the 2026 Tour was, in the words of their director of racing, Geraint Thomas, “tough going”.

Thomas, who has taken Brailsford’s place as the team’s frontman, said: “I’m happy to not be racing any more, because I suffered way too much. But it’s good to still be involved in the nitty‑gritty of it.”

• Vingegaard leads Visma–Lease a Bike to stage one win

• Ganna second for Ineos; Pogacar third for Emirates

Jonas Vingegaard stunned Tadej Pogacar, the defending champion, by taking the first yellow jersey of the 2026 Tour de France after his Visma-Lease a Bike team won the opening stage of this year’s race, a 19.6km team time trial in Barcelona.

Two years after a life-threatening crash, Vingegaard, who won this year’s Giro d’Italia, looks back to his best. “It feels amazing to have the yellow jersey again,” said the Dane, the Tour champion in 2022 and 2023. “It’s been three years and it’s one of the most beautiful jerseys in cycling. It’s the perfect start for our race.”

• Ben Ainslie and Ineos ended partnership last year

• Statement says boat used in 2024 ‘belongs to Ineos’

Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos Group is taking legal action against Sir Ben Ainslie over the boat built for the 2024 America’s Cup.

Ratcliffe and Ainslie worked closely together across two cycles of the famous sailing competition, culminating in a historic but ultimately unsuccessful challenge for the title 18 months ago.

• Danish IT supplier Netcompany is new title sponsor

• Team to be renamed and have a new kit

Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos Grenadiers cycling team will be renamed and rebranded with a new lead sponsor and kit before the start of this year’s Tour de France in Barcelona on 4 July.

The Guardian understands that while Ratcliffe and the Ineos head of sport, Dave Brailsford, will retain ownership and management of the British team, the new title sponsor will be the Danish IT supplier Netcompany.

Comments on the ‘colonisation of the UK’ by the co-owner of Manchester United were erroneous, crass and a gift to divisive forces in British society

In 2020, the year Sir Jim Ratcliffe moved his huge fortune to Monaco, migrants in the United Kingdom made tax contributions estimated to be worth around £20bn. Sir Jim, by jetting off to a tax haven on the French Riviera, saved himself an estimated £4bn. It took some brass neck for the expat owner of Ineos and co-owner of Manchester United football club to lecture the country, using inflammatory and offensive language, on the perils of immigration.

Where to begin? The statistics used by Sir Jim to back his claim that Britain was being “colonised” by migrants, in an interview with Sky News, were flatly wrong. They were also astonishingly crass, coming from a man who presides over a sporting institution famous for and proud of its global fanbase and international connections.

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Monaco-based Manchester United co-owner responds to politicians’ and football fans’ anger at ‘disgraceful’ words

• UK politics live – latest updates

Monaco-based billionaire Jim Ratcliffe faced implicit criticism from the football club he co-owns, after widespread condemnation of his claims that the UK is being “colonised” by immigrants.

The Manchester United co-owner was forced to issue a heavily qualified apology on Thursday after citing inaccurate immigration statisticsin comments labelled hypocritical and reminiscent of “far-right narratives”. Following a day of censure from the prime minister, football fans, union leaders and anti-racism campaigners, Ratcliffe said he was sorry his “choice of language has offended some people in the UK and Europe”.

Manchester United owner responds to criticism by saying: ‘It is critical that we maintain an open debate on the challenges facing the UK’

Here is video of Jim Ratcliffe making his comment about the UK being “colonised” by immigrants.

Kemi Badenoch has urged Keir Starmer to delay the departure of Sir Chris Wormald, the cabinet secretary, so that he remains in post to oversee the release of government documents relating to Peter Mandelson’s time as ambassador to Washington.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that the cabinet secretary is simply the latest person to be thrown under a bus by this prime minister.

It is all the more concerning to be changing cabinet secretary in the midst of the ongoing scandal over the appointment of Lord Mandelson and his conduct in office.

Changing the cabinet secretary in the middle of this scandal – or more precisely forcing out the incumbent without any clear process – would be an extraordinary thing to do.

Any individual appointed in the circumstances, without a full process to point to and in midst of managing a scandal, could find it difficult to demonstrate impartiality.

PM calls comments by Man United co-owner, who also hit out at people on benefits, ‘offensive and wrong’

Keir Starmer has said Manchester United co-owner Jim Ratcliffe should apologise for his comments that the UK is being “colonised” by immigrants.

In an interview with Sky News on Wednesday, Britain’s seventh-richest man, who moved to tax-free Monaco in 2020, took aim at people receiving state support and immigrants.

The government is preparing a £50m bailout for Ineos’s Grangemouth plant, after Jim Ratcliffe asked for help in October

Chemical companies owned by the billionaire Jim Ratcliffe had already been granted as much as £70m in UK state aid in the past four years, before this week’s £50m government bailout for its Grangemouth plant in Scotland.

State aid to Ineos in the last year alone was between £16m and £38m, according to government disclosures published this week. Since August 2022 the company has received between £28m and £70m.

• Retired rider to work closely with head of sport Brailsford

• ‘This team has been my home since day one,’ says Thomas

Geraint Thomas has been appointed as the new director of racing at Ineos Grenadiers, a few weeks after retiring from competition at this year’s Tour of Britain. “This team has been my home since day one, and stepping into this role feels like a natural next step,” Thomas said.

The move by Thomas, who won the Tour de France in 2018, has been long-expected and comes after a major management reshuffle at Ineos Grenadiers, under which the sports directors Zak Dempster and Oli Cookson moved to the revamped Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team.