Heading into the final rest day of the Tour de France four years ago, Geraint Thomas enjoyed a lead of almost two minutes over anybody else, a sizable cushion as the race headed into the Pyrenees.
Back then, the Welshman eased to victory in Paris, besting Tom Dumoulin by 1:51 at the end of three weeks of racing. This time around, however, Thomas will be racing into stage 16 facing a similar deficit – and then some – as he looks to do battle against race leader Jonas Vingegaard and second-placed Tadej Pogačar in the coming days.
Speaking at the Ineos Grenadiers rest day press conference in Carcassonne, Thomas, who is 2:43 off yellow, said that he expects a huge battle between the top two as the race heads to the Pyrenees for three vital stages.
“As we saw yesterday, Vingegaard had a little crash, and COVID is still rife – well not rife but I heard there were two COVID positives from those tests we did,” Thomas said. “So that all comes into play as well.
“But purely from a racing point of view, I think Pogačar is – we’ve got that steep last 3km of the climb tomorrow, downhill to the finish. I don’t think it’s too technical, but if you have 5-10 seconds over the top – it just depends on the numbers, combinations – I can just see that being attacking.
“And then the next two days I think they’ll be attacking the hell out of each other. I’d assume Jonas will cover him and then try and give a psychological blow at the end and try to gap Pogačar. The hardest stage will probably be the last of those three days. I think it will be, no matter how it looks after whatever the second day is on Wednesday, I think it can all change on that last day in the Pyrenees because that’s a super hard day.
“It will be exciting to watch for everyone at home, maybe not trying to follow them.”
As for he and his team’s strategy for taking the fight to the top two over the trio of mountain stages, Thomas said that they’ve just got to keep believing, noting that he can just get to Paris as quick as he can. Beyond that, what will be, will be, he said.
“It’s certainly going to be difficult because there’s two incredibly strong riders in front of me, not just one. But you’ve got to keep believing, and as a team we’re going to hopefully try and make the most of anything we can and keep racing the best we can.
“Basically, chatting to Steve [Cummings, Ineos DS] the other day, we’ve been talking about getting from A to B from the start to the top of climbs as quickly as we can….
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