Geraint Thomas knows the slings and arrows of this game better than most. His last two Giro d’Italia challenges were ruined by the most outrageous misfortune, and his tenure in the maglia rosa here risked coming to a premature end when Alessandro Covi (UAE Team Emirates) crashed in front of him on the descent of the Colla di Boasi with 69km of stage 11 remaining.
Until that point, Thomas and his Ineos squad had encountered only smooth waters on this Giro. Now, they suddenly found themselves in a sea of troubles, with Tao Geoghegan Hart and Pavel Sivakov also coming down in the same incident, together with rival Primoz Roglič (Jumbo-Visma).
Thomas, unhurt, was able to remount immediately, but it was instantly clear that the crash had marked the end of Geoghegan Hart’s race. The Londoner was taken to Tortona by ambulance, while a bloodied Sivakov rode alone to the finish, some 13 minutes down, dropping from 8th to 23rd overall in the process.
“It’s never straightforward, the Giro, is it?” Thomas said in the press conference truck afterwards. “When we were sat here yesterday, everyone was saying how strong we were, with five guys in the top 11. And now it’s just three of us, and Tao is gone home.”
Amid the tumult of the crash, Thomas barely had time to consider the consequences for Geoghegan Hart. In the first, frantic moments after the fall, he thought only of re-joining the race. The news of his teammate’s abandon only truly began to register as he pedalled towards the finish in Tortona.
“I’ve hardly got a scrape on me, I was really lucky. I saw that Tao was hurt, and I saw that a few of the boys were with him, so for me, it was just a case of getting back in the race and assessing it from there,” said Thomas. “But once it starts to sink in a bit, it’s a big blow, especially once we heard he had abandoned.”
Thomas inherited the overall lead from Remco Evenepoel on the rest day when the Belgian tested positive for COVID-19 and abandoned the race, and at that point, Ineos looked in a position of imposing strength, with Geoghegan Hart poised in third overall, just five seconds back, and Sivakov, Thymen Arensman and Laurens De Plus all well placed.
Although Thomas avoided injury in the crash – “I landed on Covi, which softened my blow” – and although he retains his two-second lead over Roglič in the overall standings, he knows that the balance of this Giro has shifted all over again with Geoghegan Hart’s departure.
“It changes quite a lot, really,” Thomas said. “Tao wasn’t really a secret weapon, because everyone knew how well he was going. He was just five seconds behind. After the stages, I do all this [media duties], and he was going to the bus, resting properly and doing everything right. He had a great chance of winning this Giro, and it would have been a massive asset to the team to have two of us there. But that’s bike racing, we have to adapt.”
Roglič
Thomas’ last Giro appearance in 2020 ended after the third stage when a stray bidon bounced into his path in the neutralised zone in Enna, and that unexpected flapping of butterfly wings eventually created the conditions for Geoghegan Hart to win the race in Milan three weeks later.
It remains to be seen what impact Geoghegan Hart’s withdrawal will have on Thomas’ prospects of wearing pink in Rome on May 28, but in the here and now, it has left the Welshman as Ineos’ lone leader. Thomas smiled wanly when asked what he would tell his remaining teammates on reaching the hotel on Wednesday evening.
“I think: ‘enjoy some dessert’ for a start,” he said. “Just try and regroup. You can’t change what’s been done. We’ll just assess the situation tomorrow and get out there and keep doing what we’ve been doing. We’ve been great as a unit, and this was just an unavoidable and very unfortunate incident.”
Before making his way towards the podium on Tortona’s Via Cavour, Thomas had stopped to check on the condition of his closest rival and Monaco neighbour Roglič, who was sporting a visible cut to his left hip after his fall.
“He just came over to see how I was. He said he was ok, but it looked like a deep cut, so hopefully, he’s alright,” Thomas said. “But Roglič is a tough cookie, he’s had his fair share of crashes, and he doesn’t feel pain like the rest of us, I think, so I hope he’s fine."
Thomas, of course, has had more than his portion of falls over the years, too. As well as those untimely Giro abandons, he endured a spate of crashes at the Tour de France, most notably when his challenge was ended by a broken collarbone on the descent of the Col de la Biche in 2017. As chaotic as this Giro has been, with crashes and COVID-19 triggering a flood of withdrawals, there is little here that Thomas hasn’t seen somewhere before.
“Weather-wise, it’s been the worst, but it’s kind of the norm in bike racing at Grand Tours to have huge crashes and GC guys crashing out,” Thomas said. “You get a list of favourites at the start, and it’s very rarely that they all finish the race, let alone finish in the top 10.
“It’s like a soap opera, every Grand Tour you do, there’s always something happening, there’s always a talking point, so that’s no different. From our point of view as a team, it was a bit crazier today, but up to now, it had been a dream. It’s disappointing, but at least we’re still in it.”
