Even for the Giro d’Italia, this felt like a new extreme of cruelty. Monte Lussari was still in the early throes of Primož Roglič’s victory party when Geraint Thomas emerged from a tent beside the podium, having changed out of the maglia rosa he had just conceded by 14 seconds in the stage 20 time trial.
By the time Thomas came out, Roglič had already been feted on the podium as the stage winner, his telemark celebration sending the thousands of Slovenian fans who had made the short hop over the border into raptures. “Pri-mož! Pri-mož! Pri-mož!”
Now anticipation was building for the moment Roglič would finally be presented with the maglia rosa, and his wife Lora Klinc and young son Lev had taken up position just to the side of the dais to witness the moment close-up.
It meant they were standing directly in Thomas’ path as he walked past, but the potential awkwardness of the encounter was quietly overcome by empathy. Lev is a playmate of Thomas’ son in Monaco. Klinc knows, of course, what depth a man plumbs when he loses a Grand Tour in circumstances like this.
Thomas’ response here echoed Roglic’s magnamity at La Planche des Belles Filles. His face creased into a smile when he saw his neighbours, and he stretched out a hand to greet Lev, who was dressed in a Jumbo-Visma jersey for the occasion. “He wanted to congratulate you,” Klinc told Thomas, who responded to the youngster with a playful “good job” before making his way towards the scrum of reporters that stood waiting for him.
The Welshman had raced an almost flawless Giro to this point, and he was consistent again here, placing second on the stage. The wickedly steep gradients of Monte Lussari would prove his undoing, however. Although he limited his deficit gamely on the lower slopes, he finally yielded in the closing kilometres, losing 40 seconds to Roglič and, with them, the Giro d’Italia.
“I’m pretty gutted,” Thomas said. “If I’d been told this in February or March, I probably would have bitten your hand off, but now I’m devastated, so… I think once it sinks in, I can be proud of what we did. It is what it is.”
Consistent
Thomas’ early season was compromised by illness, but his consistency had looked set to carry him to victory in this most attritional Giro after he withstood Roglič’s onslaught on the dizzying upper reaches of Tre Cime di Lavaredo on stage 19.
Although Thomas conceded three seconds there, it didn’t feel as though he had…
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