Ineos Grenadiers team leaders Geraint Thomas, Adam Yates and Daniel Martínez were left with mixed feelings after their day on the cobbles on stage 5 of the Tour de France, where a crash with 30km to go left them chasing race favourite Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates).
Thomas crashed together with Jack Haig (Bahrain Victorious) and damaged his gears, shortly after Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) had gone down when another rider clipped a hay bale on the exit of a roundabout. The Welshman fell back to the chase group, where he eventually joined forces with Wout van Aert and Jonas Vingegaard, and that helped to limit Pogačar’s time gain to 13 seconds.
Pogačar is now fourth overall, 19 seconds behind Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma). Yates is eighth, 29 seconds behind Pogačar, with Thomas a further two seconds back in tenth, while Martínez trails the Slovenian by 50 seconds.
Thomas was impressed with Pogačar’s attack in the finale, but the Ineos Grenadiers trio are still very much in the game.
“Pogačar is impressive because he doesn't have a team, he's doing it all on his own. He's some boy,” said Thomas said, whose twisted rear derailleur was crunching and jumping on the sprockets as he warmed down in the shadow of the team bus.
“It definitely could have been worse, but I felt like it could have been better as well. To be honest I felt a bit sluggish to start on this bike. Then I got into it and as soon as we hit the cobbles, I felt good.
“As the sectors were going on I felt better and better and after sector 6 or 7 there weren't many of us left. Then, literally two minutes later, Jack Haig and a few Bahrain riders came down right in front of me. I don’t know if it was also where Roglic crashed.
“I almost missed it, but I got taken out. It was all pretty quick, I got my chain back on, got back up, Tom [Pidcock] stayed with me but with 30km to go it was full gas and there wasn't much we could do.
“For the last 30 km I couldn't stay in one gear, it was constantly up and down, I was just surviving. Vingegaard came up to us with two of his guys riding, and it was just a case of hanging onto them. The legs were good, it's just a shame I crashed.”
Yates finished in the same group as Thomas and was perhaps even happier to have survived the day.
“It went OK, we got through OK,” Yates said. “I said at the beginning, as long as we get through in one piece, don't crash, don't lose time, that's a good day. I almost made the front there but was caught behind a crash. Geraint crashed, so it's not a perfect day, but we didn't lose too much time, so we can be pretty happy with that.”
Yates has rarely experienced racing on cobbles but seemed to handle them well. The fighting for position before the eleven cobbled sectors was a heavyweight battle that was always going to test his nerves and power.
“The cobbles were not the hard bit, to be honest. It's before and after,” he explained. “Once you're on the cobbles it almost goes easier in a way, because it gets settled but before it's absolute carnage, with guys chopping each other left right and centre. Then you come off the sectors and guys are knackered and swinging left and right.
“We did a good job to stay in front. It wasn't a perfect run but it could have been worse.”
