Rowe KO a major blow to Thomas

Geraint Thomas’ hopes of winning a second successive Tour de France title have been rocked after commissaires decided to throw his Ineos teammate and road captain Luke Rowe off the classic cycling race.

Rowe became embroiled in an incident with Jumbo-Visma’s Tony Martin on a hot and fractious stage 17 from Pont du Gard to Gap. It is unclear from the clips which have appeared on social media what the exact chain of events was, but at one stage it appeared Ineos and Jumbo-Visma were fighting for position at the front of the bunch when Rowe forced the Dutch team’s leader Steven Kruijswijk to move off the wheel of his teammates.

In another clip, Martin cut up Rowe, causing the Welshman to skid as he narrowly kept his bike on the road. Rowe then appeared to react by pushing or grabbing the German. After seeing the footage, commissaires disqualified both riders. They were also fined 1000 Swiss francs (£800) each.

Rowe said he was sorry and had “let the guys down”.

The disqualification — Ineos’ second in two years after Gianni Moscon was thrown off last year’s race for hitting another rider — was described as “pretty harsh” by team principal Dave Brailsford.

“There’s no doubt about it, Tony cut up Luke a little bit, he’s kind of fought for his position a little bit,” Brailsford said. “It’s nothing more than you see most days of the race. It’s a pretty harsh decision. A yellow card would have been merited, but a red card feels severe to me.”

The controversy has struck just as the Tour enters the final three stages in the Alps which are due to decide this year’s general classification.

Thomas, the 2018 champion, is second overall, 1min 35sec behind maillot jaune Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-Quick-Step), heading into the first of those stages from Embrun to Valloire today.

While Rowe is not a climber, and his absence will not be as keenly felt as it might otherwise have been, he would still have been expected to do a job in the early part of the day. He is also a big character on the team bus. Martin performs the same role for JumboVisma, for whom Kruijswijk sits third on GC, 12 seconds behind Thomas.

The closeness of the battle for yellow explains why tensions have reached boiling point. “Everyone wanted to be in the right position,” said Alaphilippe after a stage which was played out in near 40C heat. “But there were a couple guys getting nervous, physical about it. They thought I might attack, I guess, so I went over and told them to calm it.”

One thing is clear, the biggest winners from yesterday’s drama were Alaphilippe and Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ), who sits fourth, 15 seconds behind Thomas.

However, the Welshman’s coach Tim Kerrison believes Ineos remain in a strong position. With two of the three stages offering bonus seconds on climbs, Kerrison added it was going to be “exciting”.