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 surrendered much momentum in this contest. His 26-second buffer before Saturday’s time trial seemed like it might be enough until suddenly it wasn’t. In the end, he would lose the maglia rosa by 14 seconds.
“I felt OK, but with about a kilometre and a half to go, I could just feel the legs going a bit,” said Thomas said. “Primož just did an incredible ride. If anything, it’s better to lose by that much than by a couple of seconds, because then you can pick apart and say I might have done this or that. At the end of the day, I couldn’t have gone 14 seconds quicker – and he had a mechanical, too. He deserves it, and I have to be happy with second.”
Thomas’ change from his time trial bike and helmet to his regular road set-up was noticeably slower than Roglič’s, but he was only two seconds behind the Slovenian when the climbing began. Still, the final margin of defeat made any forensic examination of the change almost moot. “I think losing by 14 seconds is probably better than losing by four,” he said.
While Thomas was speaking, Vincenzo Nibali was helping Roglič into the maglia rosa on the podium above him, and the decibel levels rose accordingly. From the depths of that fluttering sea of Slovenian flags, the familiar chant started up all over again, while pink confetti now littered the finish area. “Pri-mož! Pri-mož! Pri-mož!”
For a few seconds, Thomas’ voice was drowned out entirely. It was like trying to hold a post-mortem in an Ibiza night club. Then again, maybe that didn't matter. The moment was already beyond words.
“At the minute, it’s still bittersweet,” Thomas said when the noise abated a little. “But the season I’ve had, I didn’t really start racing until Catalunya in March… I stayed strong mentally and put the work in. I tried to do what I had to do, and I came here in good shape. To come second, I can still be proud of that. But at the moment, it just hurts.”
