Sky rider finishes safely with peloton after nearly making late split on stage 3
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Geraint Thomas (Team Sky)(Image credit: Bettini Photo)
Geraint Thomas on stage 2 of the Giro d'Italia(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Team Sky's equal leaders Geraint Thomas and Mikel Landa(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Geraint Thomas (Sky) in the lead at the Tour of the Alps.(Image credit: Bettini)
Geraint Thomas and Mikel Landa at the finish(Image credit: Bettini Photo)
As he pedalled towards the Team Sky bus following the third stage of the Giro d'Italia, Geraint Thomas was left with mixed feelings after coming through a tough, windy day with his GC options intact, but having missed out on a late split.
Classics-stye racing in echelons is an in-house speciality for the Welshman, and Sky were on or near the front as the critical moment for the splits approached, around 12 kilometres to go on the exposed finale of the stage to Cagliari.
But on this occasion a slight collision with another rider left Thomas too far back just as Quick-Step Floors made their final acceleration to go clear, and Thomas was unable to get past enough riders to make the split. Briefly trying with André Greipel (Lotto Soudal), eventually he fell back to the main group.
"I was in a good position when we started it," Thomas told Cyclingnews as he rode from the finish towards the team bus, "but then we hit the roundabout and I got knocked or something, lost a few places.
"Then Quick-Step went for it, and I was too far back. I tried to bridge it, almost got across, but it was just too much."
On the plus side, Thomas said, he had got through what was a difficult stage and three tough days in Sardinia unscathed. Furthermore, "obviously Bob Jungels (Quick Step Floors) was up there in the break, but I don't think any other GC guys were. It's 15 or 20 seconds, which isn't much."
Thomas later commented it would have been good for morale to be up there with the Quick-Step Floors move, but his teammate and co-leader Mikel Landa said the principal objective, making it through the initial stages in Sardinina unscathed, had been achieved.
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"Maybe we were going for it a little too early in Sky when the splits started to go," Landa told Spanish newspaper Marca, "but just getting through these stages was really important."
Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The Independent, The Guardian, ProCycling, The Express and Reuters.
