THOMAS CLINCHES TOUR’S YELLOW JERSEY

GERAINT Thomas wore the yellow jersey at the Tour de France last year for a week. He was never going to win it overall.

He’s barely worn it for a day yet at this year’s Tour, but there’s just a chance it could be his to keep.

First, let’s try to put things into some perspective before we start. The race has only just hit the mountains, and there are a whole host of reasons why he won’t be on the top step of the podium in Paris in a couple of weeks’ time. Here are just some of them:

We’ve only just hit the high mountains. It’s Alpe d’Huez nest. And the Pyrenees are waiting.

Thomas has the dominant Grand Tour rider of his generation on the same team. And the entire Sky camp, from boss Dave Brailsford to DS Nico Portal, has been telling anyone who’ll listen that Chris Froome is Plan A.

The Welshman has never got through a grand tour without A Bad Day. Or worse, a crash, something he’s getting a bit of a reputation for.

The field of GC contenders at the Tour this year is the deepest it’s been for years.

But anyone who saw the way Thomas toyed with a stacked field on the way up to this year’s first summit finish at La Rosiere, with Froome for once playing the role of decoy rather than leader, couldn’t help but start to wonder if this might be his year.

So what’s different this time? Most significant is Thomas’ role within Team Sky. In years past he’s put in commendable rides despite being fully in the service of Chris Froome. Sky might have called him a “protected rider”, but the reality of that simply meant that he wouldn’t be put to work for Froome, closing down attacks from the team’s rivals, until the rest of the team had been exhausted. That helped Thomas remain in fourth place until the brink of Paris. But it would always take its toll in the end.

Then last year, the big objective was the Giro d’Italia. When Thomas crashed out of that, he was sent to the Tour in his customary role of lieutenant for Froome as a way of putting to good use the physical shape he’d prepared for Italy. Winning the opening time trial and taking yellow was testament to his condition, but the team’s tactics meant that would have come to an end at some point, whether he’d broken his collar bone on stage nine or not.

This year’s different. While Sky have Froome as their Plan A, they’ve also been keen to promote Thomas as much more than a bail-out option if something happens to their leader.

That seems to have been for two main reasons. The first is that, at 32, the time has come to give the former Maindy Flyer his opportunity, or risk losing him to another team. It’s contract year for Thomas, and if Sky have any ambition to keep him (and his market value will have risen sharply), they needed to start giving him more than token opportunities.

For his part, Thomas has shown the form to warrant it, most notably with an impressive performance in winning the Criterium du Dauphine last month – the traditional big Tour warm-up that’s regarded as one of cycling’s most prestigious stage races in its own right.

The second key factor has been the uncertainty around Chris Froome. There was every chance he could have missed the Tour had the long-running controversy of his adverse analytical finding for salbutamol resulted in a ban. Even with that resolved, there was no telling what state he’d be in after his dramatic victory in the Giro d’Italia back in May. The Giro-Tour double has been the breaking of some talented riders (see Nairo Quintana’s efforts last year), so it’s by no means certain that Froome will be his usual dominant self on the roads of France this summer.

Sky needed a viable alternative. And Geraint Thomas is looking exactly that.

So what happens from here? Well first, Thomas needs to prove that he can back up yesterday’s exertions on the brutal stage to Alpe d’Huez. Next week, he’s got the Pyrenees to contend with. Among it all will be a series of sketchy stages that could see disaster strike at any moment. A puncture could see him tumbling down the standings. An unlucky crash could remove him from them.

Thomas’ lead is currently one minute 25 seconds over Froome. Tours have been won by much less. But then much bigger gaps have disappeared in the blink of an eye.

One thing’s for sure, though – we’re closer to a Welsh winner in Paris than at any point in the sport’s history.