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Geraint Thomas knows the slings and arrows of this game better than most. His last two Giro d’Italia challenges were ruined by the most outrageous misfortune, and his tenure in the maglia rosa here risked coming to a premature end when Alessandro Covi (UAE Team Emirates) crashed in front of him on the descent of the Colla di Boasi with 69km of stage 11 remaining.
Until that point, Thomas and his Ineos squad had encountered only smooth waters on this Giro. Now, they suddenly found themselves in a sea of troubles, with Tao Geoghegan Hart and Pavel Sivakov also coming down in the same incident, together with rival Primoz Roglič (Jumbo-Visma).
Thomas, unhurt, was able to remount immediately, but it was instantly clear that the crash had marked the end of Geoghegan Hart’s race. The Londoner was taken to Tortona by ambulance, while a bloodied Sivakov rode alone to the finish, some 13 minutes down, dropping from 8th to 23rd overall in the process.
“It’s never straightforward, the Giro, is it?” Thomas said in the press conference truck afterwards. “When we were sat here yesterday, everyone was saying how strong we were, with five guys in the top 11. And now it’s just three of us, and Tao is gone home.”
Amid the tumult of the crash, Thomas barely had time to consider the consequences for Geoghegan Hart. In the first, frantic moments after the fall, he thought only of re-joining the race. The news of his teammate’s abandon only truly began to register as he pedalled towards the finish in Tortona.
“I’ve hardly got a scrape on me, I was really lucky. I saw that Tao was hurt, and I saw that a few of the boys were with him, so for me, it was just a case of getting back in the race and assessing it from there,” said Thomas. “But once it starts to sink in a bit, it’s a big blow, especially once we heard he had abandoned.”
Thomas inherited the overall lead from Remco Evenepoel on the rest day when the Belgian tested positive for COVID-19 and abandoned the race, and at that point, Ineos looked in a position of imposing strength, with Geoghegan Hart poised in third overall, just five seconds back, and Sivakov, Thymen Arensman and Laurens De Plus all well placed.
Although Thomas avoided injury in the crash – “I landed on Covi, which softened my blow” – and although he retains his two-second lead over Roglič in the overall standings, he knows that the balance of this Giro has shifted all over again with Geoghegan Hart’s departure.
“It…
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