Ineos Grenadiers called it a 'gutsy ride to the finish', as Geraint Thomas crashed in the final third of stage 3 of the Tour de Suisse and teammates helped him to reconnect to the peloton for the hilly finish of the 195.6km route.
It was a 'slow-motion' spill with just under 60km to ride when the peloton approached a narrow left-hand bend a few kilometres before the bonification seconds at the Tissot sprint at Magdalenau. Thomas was the only rider to go down, apparently a self-inflicted crash as he hit the edge of the pavement.
"I just hit a lip on the side of the road, really. It's my fault," he told SRF at the finish in Heiden.
"Then I just kind of got my foot caught behind me, and I twisted my knee and my hamstring, and it was a dead leg. I struggled to just bend it for the first minute or so, but then, yeah, once I got on the bike and got rolling, it freed up a bit."
He was back on his bike rather quickly, with a race medical car checking on his status in the next kilometre. From there, Bob Jungels, Andrew 'AJ' August, and Lucas Hamilton worked to bring him back into the main group. However, Thomas looked to struggle a bit in the next 10km on the approach to the Appenzell climb.
With 35km remaining, a quartet of riders - Emiel Verstrynge (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Samuele Battistella (EF Education-EasyPost), Brent Van Moer (Lotto) and Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek) - forged ahead at the front of the race, with Thomas, August and Jungels in a group 1:45 back.
With 20km to go, Simmons launched his solo attack for the win. Riders were scattered across those final kilometres as two categorised climbs threw up a difficult finish for the day. August and Jungles remained with their team leader, crossing the uphill finish in the large group 15:01 behind solo winner.
"Yeah, just a bit sore, the muscles and stuff a bit strained. But it's all OK," Thomas summed up to SRF at the end of his day.
The overall winner of Tour de Suisse in 2022, Thomas used the eight-day stage race that year to put him into top form for the Tour de France, where he finished third overall. This is the Welshman's first return to the Swiss stage race since the success three years ago.
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