GRANDADDY DEPART
Geraint feeling like an old-timer now
GERAINT THOMAS might have the backing of “Grandad Brad” Wiggins at the Tour de France but he admits he is “a lot closer to the end” of his career than the start of it.
In 2008, Thomas and Wiggins, below, powered to Olympic team pursuit gold on the track in Beijing, and Sir Brad has been one of his biggest advocates ever since.
Last week, Wiggins – Britain’s first winner of the fabled Yellow Yersey in 2012 – tipped 36-year-old Thomas for a top-three finish and insisted you write off the Welshman “at your peril”.
But when the peloton rolls down the ramp at the Grand Depart time trial in Copenhagen tomorrow, Thomas, the 2018 champion, will have no great expectations of himself.
Thomas, who won the Tour de Suisse earlier this month, said: “It’s always nice when you hear Grandad Brad saying things like that about you. The Tour de Suisse showed I was in decent shape and we’ve got a super-strong team. “I hope I’m there in the crunch moments and I can affect the race positively for us but, when it comes to the finals, who knows?” Thomas says champion Tadej Pogacar and fellow Slovenian Primoz Roglic are the men to beat this time.
And he admits he is not even sure he will carry the torch over the next three weeks as Ineos Grenadiers hedge their bets between him, Adam Yates and Dani Martinez.
Yates looked in decent form until he tested positive for Covid and had to withdraw from the Tour de Suisse. And Thomas added: “I’ve won the Tour and I’ve come second. But I’m a lot closer to the end of my career now than the start. We don’t have the favourite in the race – we all know it’s Pogacar and Roglic.
“But we’ve got numbers and hopefully we can use them at the right moments.”