Ineos Grenadiers' Geraint Thomas is still on track for and expecting to start his final Tour de France next week, with no lasting problems for a crash that took him out of the Tour de Suisse six days ago.
The Welshman crashed on stage 3 in Switzerland, and battled on to finish the stage, but didn't start the next day, on advice of his team doctors with the Tour de France on the horizon.
Speaking on Monday on his Watts Occurring podcast, Thomas explained how catching his foot in the small crash had caused him to twist his knee and hamstring, and there was some back and forth about whether he would even finish the stage. He did, but then stopped the race out of caution.
"My knee didn't feel too bad, it was more the muscles and from the twisting of it really," he said.
"The doc was basically like 'yeah, we don't want to take the risk, we think you're better just having a few days off, make sure it's 100 per cent and then you can train again and be good for the Tour' rather than battling away through here, maybe making it worse or overcompensating, twisting your back, pedalling differently.
"I think because it was Suisse and two weeks out from the Tour, they were super cautious with that side of things. Any other race it probably would have been like 'oh just start tomorrow, see how you are'. So I wanted to start, but it made sense, so that was the call."
The result was that Thomas returned home to Monaco, took a few days off the bike, and then started physio under the supervision of an Ineos Grenadiers physiotherapist, who travelled down to Monaco.
"To be honest, that's the worst bit for me," he said. "I've got nothing against the physio, obviously, he's only doing his job, but I just hate all that rehab stuff, it just cracks me.
"Luckily it's been pretty straightforward this, it's not too much. You know when you've got to do all these different exercises using the bands and all this and that, I've never been one for that, I've always struggled with that."
Thomas is not yet officially selected for the Tour, despite it being his final appearance in the race he won in 2018, and Cyclingnews understands that it's never been a given that he will be selected. But the Welshman spoke on Watts Occurring as if he is certainly going, without any caveats about selection.
Whilst he was positive about his physical condition, he was aware that he missed out on a few key days of intensity and volume by leaving Suisse, which he will need to catch up on before the Tour starts next Saturday.
"It seems pretty good," he said of his knee. "I need a big week now, that's the only problem.
"I'm not really chasing it, but it's more just the mental side. I could have had five more days of racing," he continued.
"Racing these days, it's a bit more intense, you're sprinting more out of corners, it's just a bit more intense, so I feel like I have to do a bit more of that in training which is tougher to do, because in a race you've got a number on your back and you're racing so it's easy to dig in and dig deep. To do it in training, obviously it can still be done, it just takes a bit more mental energy."
However, Thomas also pointed out that, with this his final Tour, and only two more races – one a farewell lap at the Tour of Britain Men – on his plan, this is his last serious block of race preparation.
"But I was also thinking, I've only got one more week of that, forever," he said. "So a week of that, I'll go to the Tour, then I've got three weeks til the Tour of Germany, then there's a week in between until the Tour of Britain, but that will be a lot less intense, I'll be training obviously but it's a different vibe. So it's just one more week, that's all I've got to commit to now."
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