Battered and bruised Geraint bides his time
GERAINT Thomas played it safe during the 12th stage of the Giro d’Italia rather than risk doing more damage to a shoulder and knee, writes Andy Howell.
Wales’ twice Olympic track gold medallist and Commonwealth Games king of the road lost 31 seconds during the run-in to the finish of the 234km (136ml) leg from Forli to Reggio Emilia as he was shepherded by three of his Sky team-mates.
Safety rather than throwing caution to the wind was the order of the day during the longest stage of the race as Thomas continues his recovery from the dislocated right shoulder, knee injury, and the cuts and bruising he suffered after being brought down in a pile-up on Sunday.
Although the race doctor managed to quickly pop the shoulder back into its joint, enabling hardman Thomas to continue, the 30-year-old stretched ligaments.
He stormed around the team trial on Tuesday, finishing second, but was in more pain during Wednesday 161km (100ml) stage through the Apennines Mountains from Firenze to Bagno di Romagna and was unable to accelerate when defending champion Vincenzo Nibali (Bahrain-Merida) put the hammer down on the steepest section of the last of four climbs.
Thomas worked with Dutchman Steven Kruijswijk (Team LottoNLJumbo) to limit his losses to race leader Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) to 48 seconds.
With yesterday’s stage 12 being virtually flat and set to end in a sprint, Team Sky preferred for Thomas not to get involved in the hurly-burly during the final kilometres as the speed increased and the sprint trains jostled for position.
He lost 31 seconds to drop a place to 15th in the overall standings and is now 6min 46sec behind Dutch dynamo Dumoulin.
Today’s 167km (104ml) stage 13 from Reggio Emilia to Tortona is panflat and another sprint finish beckons.
Thomas will look further ahead because from tomorrow onwards – apart from the final-day time trial into Milan – the remaining eight stages are in the mountains with four of them, two in the Alps and two in the Dolomites, having been dubbed “brutal” by contenders for the pink leader’s jersey.
“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,” said Thomas.
“Hopefully, by the next mountain top finish on Saturday, I’ll feel more or less back to normal.”
Grand Tour debut-maker Fernando Gaviria (Quick-Step Floors) bagged his third stage win and Colombia’s fourth of the Giro when he out-sprinted Italy’s Jakub Mareczko (Wilier-Triestina) and Ireland’s Sam Bennett (Bora-Hansgrohe) during a thrilling finish in Reggio Emilia.