Thomas builds form at Tirreno
Ineos man fine-tuning another tilt at the Tour
Geraint Thomas has declared himself more than satisfied with his performance at last week’s Tirreno-adriatico, where he was able to duke it out with the favourites in some hard terrain as he builds towards an assault on the Tour de France this summer.
After stage four’s summit finish at Prato di Tivo, won by Tadej Pogačar (UAE-TEAM Emirates) the Ineos Grenadiers rider found himself in 10th place overall, 1-25 behind the reigning Tour champion, who was also leading the GC.
Speaking after the stage he said: “I’m better than I expected [I would be] here. In January I was just sort of riding around Gran Canaria, getting the hours in, not too much intensity, so I’ve already moved on a lot this past month and it’s nice just to be in the mix and just race a bit differently.”
Tirreno is the Welshman’s third stage race this year – he has already ridden the Etoile de Bessèges and the Tour des Alpes Martimes et du Var, coming 49th and 26th overall respectively.
After Ineos team-mate Egan Bernal had tried to jump off the front in the closing kilometres, the Welshman hit out, then latching onto Pogačar’s wheel for a few minutes before the Slovenian soloed away to victory atop the 14km climb.
“I didn’t want to pull on the front, I thought Egan was better today, so I thought rather than pull on the front I’d attack and make van Aert or whoever chase me. Unfortunately, Egan didn’t quite have the legs, but for me, I’m happy with where I’m at, on track for July really.
“Bonus was finishing in time for the second half of the Wales rugby game,” he added.
British EF Education-nippo rider Simon Carr also impressed, finishing eighth on the stage and moving up to the same place in the overall classification, only a minute down on Pogačar.
Both Thomas and Carr’s spell in the top 10 was, however, short-lived. They found themselves on the wrong side of some major gaps the next day, both losing more than 13 minutes and dropping to 23rd and 22nd place on GC respectively.