So near, yet so far. Geraint Thomas (Ineos) was in a decidedly mixed mood after stage 9's time trial at the Giro d’Italia, where he came within a whisker of beating favourite Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep), but ended up a scant second behind the Belgian star.
Thomas’ agonisingly close near-miss, though, has seen the Briton confirm his strong early form in the Giro and puts him in second overall, 45 seconds on Evenepoel, and two seconds ahead of Primoz Roglic.
Thomas said he viewed his latest success as a familiar one in one way, saying, “It’s the story of my career, proving people wrong, everyone always doubts me and it’s nice to be getting better.”
In an excellent day for Ineos Grenadiers, and in a time trial where the gaps between the first five were a slim eight seconds, teammate Tao Geoghegan Hart was just one second slower than Thomas and remains well-positioned for the GC fight.
The two have everything to play for, in other words, and while Thomas was understandably disappointed not to have taken the stage, longer-term, as he told reporters afterwards, he’s in a position to fight for the Giro victory.
“It’s obviously nice to feel the legs are coming but I’ve been a few times second in a Giro TT now and it’s a bit annoying,” Thomas told a small group of reporters.
“It’s a good result for myself, for Tao and the other boys. The team’s looking strong, but it would have been nice to have got that win.”
Thomas said he had not really gone into the time trial with no clear idea regarding how he expected Evenepoel to perform, although he agreed that it was surprising that the gap between all the top finishers had been so small.
“Yeah, yeah, I didn’t know really what to expect, I was just trying to focus on what I needed to do and hope I’d be up there. It was a close one.”
With visibly improving form, as demonstrated when he was able to follow Roglic on stage 8’s hilly finale - and where Evenepoel had been gapped - Thomas was asked if he was now hoping to build his form for the third week.
“There’s still two weeks to go, but as a team we’re in a strong position and hopefully we can use that strength now.”
As for his goals in the Giro and whether he is a potential winner, Thomas was in no doubt. “For sure that’s been the objective since the start of the year, and it’s definitely been an up and down, stop-start. But I managed to get it right just about and we’ll see how the rest of the race goes.”
His reaction when Evenepoel came over the line, he said, was “a couple of swearwords. But he’s obviously a massive talent and as we saw in the first TT he’s strong in the time trial. But I was surprised at how close it was.”
If this morning he had been told that he would only be one second behind Evenepoel - in fact, it was unofficially recorded as even less, just nine hundredths - Thomas was clear, “I would have been slightly happier than I am now. I didn’t know what to expect but it was good to be up there.”
By having both himself and Tao up there on GC, he says the situation is ideal. “Tao’s obviously in the form of his career and all the other guys, Pavel [Sivakov], Thymen [Arensman] and Laurens De Plus, are all riding strongly. Hopefully, we can use that strength, as I said and try and make something of it.”
He couldn’t complain about his own form either, one reporter suggested. “No, as I said, feeling better, it’s just day by day, just keep doing the right things now and stay in our own little world, own little bubble and do what you do.”
It was also, he recognised, a nice feeling to be up there in the Giro after two previous editions which did not work out so well through no fault of his own, with crashes effectively ending both.
“Yes, so far, so good. But never take anything for granted in this game, so we’ll see how it goes.”
