Suffering mechanical mishaps amid speeding Neapolitan traffic is never an experience for the fainthearted, but nothing ever seems to faze Geraint Thomas.
The Welshman certainly betrayed few signs of panic when he was brought to stop by an unshipped chain a dozen or so kilometres outside Naples on stage 6 of the Giro d’Italia.
It helped, of course, that he was able to rely on a deluxe roadside assistance service to ferry him back up to the peloton. After Thomas had righted his chain and remounted, he found three Ineos Grenadiers teammates had waited for him: Salvatore Puccio, Ben Swift and Hour Record holder Filippo Ganna.
The horsepower at Thomas’ disposal gave his chase reasonable guarantees of success, but the effort required was no less intense. Ganna’s mammoth turns – and, at one point, the proximity of their team car’s rear bumper – helped to bring them back into the sanctuary of the peloton with a shade under 7km to go.
Thomas would reach the finish line on Naples’ Via Carracciolo at the same time as Remco Evenepoel and the rest of his key rivals, and he remains sixth overall at 1:26.
“The gears were a bit dodgy all day, but I didn’t want to change my bike because it was so crazy,” Thomas said when he arrived at the Ineos bus on the seafront. “It was ok, but then the chain just came off the front and off the cassette. It took me a while to realise it was off the cassette, but I put it back on.
“After that, the boys were great in getting me back into position. Luckily, I’ve got strong guys around me. With Swifty, Pippo and Puccio, I had great support.”
Thomas wasn’t the only general classification contender to endure anxious moments after the Giro had tripped along the headlands of the Amalfi Coast and then sped beneath the shadow of Vesuvius back towards Naples.
Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) was forced into a successful pursuit of his own after a late puncture, but, mercifully, there were no late crashes of the kind that had marred the previous day’s finale in Salerno.
“It could have been a lot worse,” Thomas said. “At least it was just a chain coming off again and nothing else.”
Talking team tactics
At the start in Naples, all eyes had been on Remco Evenepoel, who crashed twice on the road to Salerno, though the world champion’s juggling of a football at the signing-on podium on Piazza del Plebiscito seemed to allay most…
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