After Tao Geoghegan Hart's Giro d'Italia win, Dave Brailsford said the "defensive" style of the Team Sky era was a thing of the past and declared a new era for the team.

"We are Grenadier now," the team manager said twice in an interview with Eurosport in Milan.

Brailsford, who has overseen 11 Grand Tour victories since the team was founded in 2010, suggested that the team's identity has changed with the change in sponsors. Having faced criticism from some for his big-budget, control-freak approach, he highlighted the Giro, where Ineos Grenadiers won seven stages and Geoghegan Hart took the overall win on the final day, as a turning point.

"What I like about this Giro is that we ran trains, we ran a defensive style, and we won a lot with that, I won a lot of races with that," Brailsford said.

"At the end of the day, this sport is about the racing, the emotion, the exhilarating moments of racing. We are grenadiers now."

Of course, there is no telling how things would have turned out had it not been for the crash of pre-race favorite Geraint Thomas on stage 3. Similarly, the emergence of Jumbo Visma as a group in the Tour de France and its preliminaries seems to have necessitated a change of style.

However, Brailsford emphasized the role of Jim Ratcliffe, who bought the team in 2019 and renamed it Ineos Grenadiers this year to promote his company's new 4x4 vehicle. Ratcliffe was the team's owner, and after a decade under Sky, Brailsford suggested that Ratcliffe's personal influence had led the team in a new direction.

"I love Jim Ratcliffe. He deserves great credit, too. He has guided us and is quite an inspirational person. [What I like about him is that he's an adventurer and a racer himself, and that kind of person. It's not just about parking the bus. It gives him freedom and confidence.

"That's why I started racing as a kid. We're the Grenadiers now. It's a whole new and different story."

"I'm emotional. I'm intense at times and I'm always thinking about things. But I got into this sport when I was younger because I loved racing. That's what drew me to it."

"In the last 10 years we've had a lot of victories, and then I think, 'I'm going to win this race, I'm going to win this race, I'm going to win this race.' Like the story of Rohan Dennis, or the story of Tao in London. When we started Team Sky, he went to Bradley Wiggins.

"I'm delighted with the new philosophy that the sport has. I have to embrace it and see how well I can do in the races."