It must be a strange Giro d’Italia for Geraint Thomas. The Ineos Grenadiers rider is second on general classification, every second matters, and he is having one of the races of his career. However, he is over six minutes behind Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) who leads in pink.
On Sunday, on stage 15, Thomas defended his second place on general classification ably, matching Dani Martínez (Bora-Hansgrohe) in third.
On his podcast, Watts Occcuring, the Welshman explained to fellow Ineos rider Luke Rowe that he had made a decision not to chase Pogačar when he attacked, in order to protect his second place position. However, he acknowledged that "it just makes us look so bad".
"I didn’t feel great to be honest," he said. "It’s so much of a head game, this sport. I tried to stay strong, I knew I would come good. Sure enough I did feel better in the final. When UAE started ramping it. It was obvious Pog was going to go. If I tried to follow I could follow for a bit, and then blow up and lose ten minutes.
"Even before he went I decided I was just going to stick with the other GC guys. If they followed, I ‘d have to try, or at least slowly come up to them. They kinda didn’t. They did to start with, but nobody really had the legs. Dani was in the middle. It just turned into a race amongst us. It sounds a bit defeatist, but it was almost like 'alright Pog, catch you at the finish, you can have two, three, four minutes, whatever you like, this is our race here'.
"We went quite slow, and I knew I could go harder here, but I wasn’t going to ride and pull everyone on my wheel. I’m sure a few other guys felt the same. It was a stalemate between us."
Thomas claimed back second on stage 14 thanks to a solid time trial performance, but one where he still lost over half a minute to Pogačar. He looks well set for the rest of the Giro, but Pogačar is simply stronger than his competition.
"People were giving the GC guys and me abuse for just racing amongst ourselves, it’s just typical Twitter stuff," he said. "To put it in perspective, anyone out there that's a runner, if your best 10k run is 40 minutes, if you start off at 30 minute pace for 20 minutes, just see what happens. You’re going to blow your doors off, you’re going to creep in, and you’ll do 49 minutes rather than 40.
"That’s what it was like today, I could try and stay with him, but I knew I didn’t have the legs, especially with the altitude and everything. You can completely blow your doors off. That’s the decision I made today. It sounds defeatist, but at the end of the day, Pog is on a different planet."
Thomas has not quite waved the white flag just yet. Whilst he knows that Pogačar's form is strong, Thomas argues that the Slovenian's weakness still lies in his team.
"It might be different next week, I don’t know,” he said. "I’ll certainly try if I feel ok, but it is what it is. When it came down to the GC guys, we’re good actually.
"Chapeau to UAE. They buried themselves today. Like we said in the past, apart from Pog, the rest are normal bike riders. They’re going to pay for that. They’ve just got to hope they don’t pay for it at the same time. Saying that, Pog will just ride at the front. Some of those boys are going to suffer this last week."
