MY NUMBERS ARE AS GOOD AS LAST YEAR, SAYS THOMAS
EXCLUSIVE Ahead of today’s Grand Depart in Brussels, Tom Cary joins the Tour’s defending champion during a training camp in Tenerife to find him riding harder than any of his Team Ineos colleagues
Tim Kerrison is just explaining why Tenerife is “the perfect training location, with the perfect mix of altitude and solitude; not too many people, not too many cars”, when we round the corner of a descent to see a gaggle of Team Ineos jerseys huddled around one of their number. Geraint Thomas is down.
Kerrison, Ineos’s head of athlete performance, curses under his breath as he pulls up alongside the group before jumping out to ascertain the damage. A few minutes later the Australian climbs back into the driver’s seat, looking relieved. “He hit a car,” he reports. “Apparently it was sort of half in the hard shoulder. Froomey [Chris Froome] went left to go around it, then the car just swung left, saw Froomey and jammed on its brakes. G kind of slammed into its boot. I think he’s OK but he says his hip’s a bit sore.”
And the car? Did the driver not stop? “He put his indicator on and drove off,” Kerrison shrugs. “It’s just one of those things.”
Thomas dodged a bullet. The Welsh rider will set out from Brussels’ Royal Palace today for the first stage of the 2019 Tour de France, proudly sporting the No1 on his jersey, signifying last year’s champion. But his Tour could so easily have gone the way of Froome’s. A couple of weeks after this training camp finishes the four-time champion crashes during a reconnaissance ride at the Criterium du Dauphine, fracturing his femur, hip, ribs, sternum and neck. Froome is out until Christmas at the earliest.
This is the gauntlet every rider must go through in the build-up to a Tour. Each of the 176 starters today will have had close shaves, near misses, potentially raceending crashes as they clocked up the training miles.
Those who survived will hope to arrive in perfect condition. Froome was approaching his best form. Thomas is, according to Kerrison, in better shape than he has ever been. He counsels not to listen to those saying the
Welshman was on the lash all winter and will be pedalling squares this year. “There is no question G’s numbers are better than last year,” Kerrison says. “He made a good step forward last year and he’s made another step forward this year. I suspect that little tumble he had is going to take the shine off what you see from him today. But once that weight comes down – he has another 1kg to go – there is no doubt he is on track.” In fact, the tumble does not seem to affect Thomas. Kerrison has his group eating sandwiches all day, though not of the jamon y queso variety. These are “threshold sandwiches”.
“The threshold is the filling, and the recovery is the bread,” Kerrison explains. “We have our own kind of food-based training language which very quickly migrates to other teams as our riders move on.
“There’s the club sandwich which Wout [Poels] is doing now. That’s five [minutes], five, five, five... threshold, zone three, threshold, zone three. And then we have other sandwiches. Torque sandwiches, for instance, which is same power, lower cadence.”
Ineos have been coming to Teide for nine years, since the team devised a plan to transform Bradley Wiggins into a Tour winner. The team stay in the one hotel inside the Mount Teide National Park, in the shadow of the volcano, though it has become more crowded in recent years as other teams have cottoned on. The venue offers proper climbs, altitude (“train at sea level, sleep at altitude” is the mantra), guaranteed weather even in a northern European winter ...
This is Thomas’s third camp this year. And while his results on the road have been nothing to shout about – his enforced withdrawal from the Tour of Switzerland two weeks ago following a crash deprived us of the chance to find out where he is – the man himself is quietly confident.
“My numbers are good; as good as they were last year for sure,” Thomas says later, sitting in the team kitchen back at the hotel.
“Whether that means I’ll be the best rider again I don’t know. I could be producing the same numbers, hitting the same weight, and there could be three guys better than me. We’ll see I guess.” If he fails, Thomas insists it will not be for lack of motivation. He is famously laid-back; his relaxed nature in interviews sometimes giving the impression he does not care as much as his rivals. With one Tour victory to his name, there are those who feel he might be content with his haul.
“That’s nonsense,” he says. “So much of this sport is in the head. Can you commit? To all the time away from home, all the pain, all the sacrifice. As soon as you lack that real focus or hunger you’re going to be found out. Certainly I feel – sat here today anyway – motivated to do everything I can.”
It looks that way on the roads of Tenerife. Thomas, Froome and Poels do an extra hour on their time trial bikes after the main group ride ends. Thomas then sneaks in an extra 20 minutes after the other two are done, taking him to six hours. “I was similar last year,” he explains, admitting the extra time on the bike is partly psychological. “I always like to knock out a few ‘sixes’. There’s no better feeling than coming here … even though it’s really hard, and you know it’s going to be a big couple of weeks, you really enjoy that process. I just love this sport, this life.”
It is the memory of something earlier in the day that lingers on the flight home, though; a 10km uphill team time trial back to the hotel at the end of the group ride.
The group had stopped for a coffee just beforehand, Kerrison announcing a plan to deliver Froome to the summit. The riders, conscious of a journalist in their midst, know how that might be construed, teasing both men about who is “Team Froomey” and who is “Team Thomas”. Thomas smiles, munching an apple.
The effort gets under way. Jonathan Castroviejo rides for 3km before swinging over. Next up it is Michal Kwiatkowksi and Dylan van Baarle for another 3km (Kwiatkowski blows early, dropping back to the car to say that “Froomey wanted to squeeze more… not for me today”). Poels and Thomas are last up, swinging over with 1km to go. But, as Froome takes over and tries to push on to the finish line, he reaches his limit.
Thomas, who has not stopped pedalling, does not even look up. He comes back around his teammate and keeps on riding.
‘So much is in the head. As soon as you lack that real focus you are going to be found out’