Elia Viviani (Ineos Grenadiers) and Daryl Impey (Ineos Grenadiers) will step into Sport Director roles at the Ineos Grenadiers from 2026, in a move that pointedly reconnects the team with its Sky-era roots and attempts to close the gap to Visma–Lease a Bike and UAE Team Emirates.
Announced by the team on Friday, the double appointment is as much a cultural statement as it is a staffing change. Viviani, 35, formally retired from road racing after the Ghent Six Day to take up the job, drawing a line under a career that brought stage wins at all three Grand Tours. Impey, who stopped racing in 2023, returns to his roots, having raced alongside Geraint Thomas at Team Barloworld. His old teammate now serves as Director of Racing at Ineos.
"I am thrilled to return to the team that has always felt like home, firstly as a rider but now as part of the staff," Viviani said in the team announcement. "I want to give my absolute best to support the riders and share everything I have learned throughout my career."
Impey framed the move as both a reunion and a reset. "I have raced against the Ineos Grenadiers for many years... so it is great to now be working together. Having started my career as a teammate of Geraint, it is really special to be reunited now as colleagues."
Strategically, the hires look like a conscious tilt away from a purely data-led model and towards on-the-road nous. Ineos have been criticised in recent seasons for tactical rigidity and a blunted winning edge. Bringing back former lieutenants who lived through the Sky-era dominance is a classic boot-camp manoeuvre – an attempt to hard-wire a past winning mentality into a new generation.
Viviani’s experience guiding sprints and positioning under pressure should prove valuable for a squad that has often lacked incisive race craft in reduced-group finishes. Impey, long regarded as one of the WorldTour’s sharpest road captains, offers read-and-react intelligence that algorithms still struggle to replicate.
Whether this cultural rebuild is enough to restore Grand Tour supremacy against supercharged rivals will only become clear in 2026 and beyond. What is already obvious is that Ineos have decided their future starts by re-learning their past.
Cover image credit: Picture by Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com
