‘UNREAL’ MOMENT PUTS GERAINT INTO YELLOW
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 not 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 tomorrow. 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 GERAINT Thomas will today wear the yellow jersey after winning stage 11 of the Tour de France in La Rosiere to take the overall lead.
Thomas attacked six kilometres from the top of the final climb of this 108.5km stage from Albertville, overhauling rival Tom Dumoulin and then pushing on to catch former team-mate Mikel Nieve who was looking to win the stage out of the breakaway.
It will be a second spell in yellow for Thomas, who won the opening time trial of last year’s Tour in Dusseldorf.
Thomas’ Sky team-mate Chris Froome was third on the stage, level on time with Team Sunweb’s Dumoulin as they came home 20 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 sharply risen after today), 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 seconds after Thomas.
That sees Froome move up to second in the general classification, with the provisional standings showing him one minute and 25 seconds behind.
Dumoulin now sits third, a further 19 seconds back.
Thomas’ second career Tour stage win was delivered with panache. Though the sight of Sky massed on the front of the peloton most of the day was not one to excite fans, the way in which he attacked with yellow on the line was.
Sky kept their powder dry until Thomas launched his move. Froome initially held back, marking counter-moves from AG2R La Mondiale’s Romain Bardet and UAE uncertainty around Chris Froome. There was every chance he could have missed the Tour had the long-running controversy if his adverse analytical finding for salbutamol had resulted in a ban. If 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 tomorrow’s brutal stage to Alpe d’Huez, described by some as the toughest of this year’s race. Next week, he’s got the Pyrenees to contend with, including the short and explosive 65km stage to Col du Portet, this year’s highest point. 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 altogether.
Thomas’ lead is currently 1.25 over Chris Froome. Tours have been won Team Emirates’ Dan Martin before leaving them both behind.
By catching Dumoulin, Thomas had already done enough for yellow but wanted more as Nieve slid into view, kicking again to pass Nieve inside the final 400 metres and take the stage win.
“It is unreal – I didn’t expect it,” he said. “We were low on numbers, so it was instinct when I went. I committed, got across to Dumoulin and then sat on.
“It is always an honour to be in yellow.”
Thomas’ joy ironically came on a day when another former pupil of Cardiff’s Whitchurch High School, Sam Warburton, was forced to announce his retirement from rugby. by much less. But then much bigger gaps have disappeared in the blink of an eye.
The real question for Thomas is whether he can finally prove an ability not just to dazzle with a spectacular ride on a given day, but whether he can stick with the best guys for three whole weeks. Ultimately, Thomas’ chances at this year’s Tour will be decided not by how good he is on his best day, but how bad he is on his worst.
But let’s assume that Thomas’ form holds. As long as that’s the case, we’ll see Sky try to exploit their twin position at the top of the GC to put rivals under pressure. Rather than witness a civil war like that which took place between Froome and Wiggins in 2012, Sky will be hoping to see more of the perfect tactics from La Rosiere, where Thomas attacked, forcing Froome’s rivals to chase until they exhausted themselves, at which point Froome rode up to his teammate who duly kicked again.
Ten days of that will make things very hard for everyone else. And as long as Thomas remains the man in possession, it’ll be hard for Sky to insist he surrenders his lead.
One thing’s for sure though - we’re closer to a Welsh winner in Paris than at any point in the sport’s history.