‘I wouldn’t be here if Pogačar was unbeatable’ – Geraint Thomas eyes fresh approach to Giro d’Italia

In Turin’s Parco San Valentino on Thursday night, Geraint Thomas briefly found himself face to face with an old heartache. Since losing the pink jersey on the final weekend of last year’s Giro d’Italia, the Welshman had managed to avoid watching footage of that fateful time trial. 

Now, as he waited to mount the stage at the presentation of the 2024 race, he was confronted by images of Primož Roglič stomping up Monte Lussari through a sea of Slovenian flags to snatch the maglia rosa from his grasp.

“It’s a bit weird seeing Roglič in the last TT, because I’ve avoided watching any of that and I’ve just seen it now on the montage,” Thomas smiled in the mixed zone. “But it’s good to be here, I love this race and I’m looking forward to it.”

Twelve months ago, the Giro was ultimately distilled to a contest between Thomas and Roglič on a mountainside on the Italy-Slovenian border. This time out, another Slovenian, Tadej Pogačar, sets out as the unbackable favourite for final victory, but Thomas has been in this game long enough to know that every imaginable obstacle can interrupt a man’s path in a three-week race.

Last year, after all, the Giro was billed beforehand as a duel between Roglič and Remco Evenepoel, but it took on a different tone once the Belgian was forced out by illness after dominating the opening week.

Thomas, by dint of pedigree if not necessarily of form, appears to be the man most likely to challenge Pogačar’s pre-eminence here, even if the expectation is that he, like everybody else, will be consigned to following at a distance. In an interview in Friday morning’s edition of La Gazzetta dello Sport, however, Thomas struck a bullish tone under the headline: “I wouldn’t be at the Giro if Pogačar was unbeatable.”

The Welshman tends to construct his Grand Tour challenges carefully, keeping risks to the bare minimum, and the approach has stood him in good stead even in an era of increasingly aggressive racing. At last year’s Giro, like at the 2022 Tour, Thomas’s consistency across the three weeks carried him to a podium finish, but he indicated a greater willingness to take risks this time out.

“As long as it’s the right time and place,” Thomas told La Gazzetta. “I’m not saying I’m going to attack with 80k to go for the sake of it, it has to be something that has a chance. We want to race a bit more aggressively as a team, and that means going for stages as well as GC, but we won’t be stupid about it.”

Not unfinished business

Although Thomas was compelled to dwell on Monte Lussari on Thursday night, he downplayed the idea that he still had unfinished business with the Giro. The greater frustration, he explained, came in 2017 and 2020, when crashes saw his general classification unravel before it had really begun. On the first occasion, Thomas was caught up in the mass incident at the foot of the Blockhaus. Three years later, his Giro ended after a bidon bounced into his path at the start of stage 3 to Mount Etna.

“Going into last year I felt I did [have unfinished business] because I had crashed out twice before when I was in good shape,” Thomas said. “But last year, when I was still second after a stop-start preparation, I felt like I’d achieved something there. Primož won that race last year, it’s not that I lost it. The last TT he did was incredible.

“Of course, I’d love to win and turn it around from last year, but I don’t feel pressure because I’ve achieved something at the Giro. I still want to win and obviously I’m still going to try to do everything I can. But maybe having less pressure might give me a bit more of an advantage and make me less conservative and maybe try something different.”

On Friday morning, Ineos Grenadiers announced that Thomas’ friend and podcast co-host Luke Rowe would retire at the end of this season. Thomas, for his part, has confirmed that he will race on into 2025, which is likely – but still not certain – to be his final year in the professional peloton.

“At a certain point, you have to stop and that could be the right moment,” Thomas said. “We’ll make a decision in the winter, but it should be the last one.”

Like last season, Thomas has followed a deliberately low-key build-up to the Giro. At the Volta a Catalunya, he was content to finish in more than 18 minutes down on Pogačar, while he showed gradual signs of progress at the Tour of Alps, much as he did in 2023. This season, mind, Thomas has miles to ride and promises to keep beyond the Giro. Like Pogačar, he will also tackle the Tour, even if he was adamant that his current thinking leads only to Rome.

“It was a slightly slower start this year, I guess, with the thought of backing up with the Tour,” Thomas said at Thursday evening’s team presentation. “But I’ve been thinking about getting to the Giro in the best shape possible and I haven’t been thinking further ahead than Rome, and then we’ll deal with the aftermath after that.”