Geraint grits his teeth and rides through pain
GERAINT Thomas has refused to give up on his bid for a strong finish at the Giro d’Italia, despite suffering from his injuries during a stamina-sapping stage 11.
The Welsh star, who had rode an astonishing time trial to finish second the previous day, warned before the 161km (100ml) leg through the Apennines Mountains from Firenze to Bagno di Romagna he wasn’t feeling his best.
Team Sky leader Thomas dislocated his right shoulder during a pileup last Sunday – a race doctor “popped” it back in and he jumped back on his bicycle but lost a significant amount of time – and suffered cuts and bruising.
“I feel worse than on Tuesday – my arm is really sore. Wednesday will be a really hard stage and hard to get through,” he’d said.
And so it proved when Thomas, who struggled to get out of the saddle and pedal standing up because of the pressure it put on his shoulder, was dropped by the general classification favourites on the steepest section of the fourth and final mountain climb when defending champion Vincenzo Nibali (Bahrain-Merida) put in a vicious acceleration.
“I’m going to play it day-by-day and see how I get through the next two days and see how I am and after that, I’ll have a clearer picture,” Thomas told teamsky.com.
“There’s a couple of easy days coming up which will hopefully play to my advantage. We have two flat days to recover and then we’ll see how things are going. It was only an hour on Monday whereas today (yesterday) was four and a half hours and I was suffering all day.
“I had a really sore knee as well and I just had to finish as best I could.
After being unable to stay with most of the other big names, Thomas joined a group which contained fellow overall contender Steven Kruijswijk (Team LottoNL-Jumbo) and managed to limit its losses on race leader Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) to 48 seconds.
Thomas is 14th in the overall standings at 6min 21sec with fellow Briton Adam Yates (Orica-Scott), who was another crash victim last Sunday, 16th at 6min 58sec.
“I was with Kruijswijk. We were riding quite well together, but in-front they were really going for it as well. Then Phil Deignan (Sky team-mate) came back and helped a bit at the end, which was really good,” said Thomas. The 30-year-old isn’t giving up on climbing into the top 10, perhaps higher, once his injuries ease.
“It’s still a big, big task but we’ll try to keep fighting. I’m not just going to give up – I’ve worked too hard for that.
“I’d love to win a stage, I still haven’t won a stage of a Grand Tour yet. I was second in the time trial and have been second a few times before, so hopefully I can get a stage win at some point.
“There’s still a long way to go, a lot of racing, I’ll give it everything each day, and try to recover.
“Hopefully, by the next mountain top (on Saturday) I’ll feel more or less back to normal.
“Is a podium possible? I’m definitely not going to give up at the moment, but it’s still a long way off.”