Giro d’Italia 2021 cycling news – Egan Bernal named Ineos Grenadiers joint-leader with Pavel Sivakov

Egan Bernal has been named Ineos Grenadiers’ joint-leader for the Giro d’Italia along with Pavel Sivakov.

Team Ineos announced their line-up for the opening Grand Tour of the season on Tuesday.

Bernal, the 2019 Tour de France champion, will be making his debut in the race, while Sivakov finished ninth at the Giro two years ago, holding the white jersey (young rider classification) for three stages before being pipped by Miguel Angel Lopez.

Joining Bernal and Sivakov in Italy will be world time trial champion Filippo Ganna, plus Jonathan Castroviejo, Daniel Martinez, Gianni Moscon, Jhonatan Narvaez and Salvatore Puccio.

The Giro begins this weekend in Turin, and will be shown live and ad-free on the Eurosport App and eurosport.co.uk.

Tom Owen predicted Egan Bernal and Remco Evenepoel could be potential contenders for the Giro when previewing the Grand Tour. Here he is:

"Two wunderkinds, two serious injuries that abbreviated their 2020 seasons. Both Egan Bernal and Remco Evenepoel are on their roads to recovery, although we would probably say the Colombian is further down the route. He has raced so far this year and looked decent, but his short-notice decision to skip the Tour of the Alps does put a question mark over his level. We shall see what sort of condition he arrives in – and whether his back can hold out through three attritional weeks in Italy.

"Evenepoel is yet more of an unknown quantity; he has not raced at all yet this year, and the first event on his programme is Il Giro itself. Can he possibly be ready by then? It would be a miracle. But also, who better to perform such a feat than the miraculous man from Schepdaal."