Geraint Thomas wins Tour de Romandie

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Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) made up for his blunder on the previous day to claim overall victory at the Tour de Romandie, as Remi Cavagna (Deceuncink-QuickStep) won the final-day time trial.

Thomas, who bizarrely crashed when sprinting alongside Michael Woods (Israel Start-Up Nation) atop Thyon 2000 on Saturday, made no mistake in recovering his 11-second deficit to the Canadian leader on the 16km course.

Thomas placed third on the stage, with Stefan Bissegger (EF-Nippo) producing another fine time trial to take second place.

Richie Porte made it a one-two on the final podium for Ineos, as he leapfrogged Marc Soler (Movistar), Ben O’Connor (AG2R Citroën) and Woods himself, who slipped to fifth overall.

Fausto Masnada (Deceuninck-QuickStep), who started the day sixth overall, produced his best time trial to date to place sixth on the stage and claim the final spot on the overall podium.

“I’m very happy, especially after the old mishap yesterday. That definitely made it more of a challenge today.” said Thomas. “Me and Richie came here wanting to win the race with one of us, and now we’re first and second, so can’t complain.”

Even Woods wrote off his chances of defending yellow against Thomas, and the balance of power was apparent by the intermediate checkpoint half-way through the undulating course. After a short descent and a nasty cobbled climb, there was a localized patch of heavy rain on the drag to the checkpoint, where Thomas was already 31 seconds to the good.

He was also a fraction of a second up on Cavagna’s benchmark there, but any temptation of going for the stage win was overruled by caution, as Thomas opted for a risk-free approach to the descent into Fribourg ahead of the final kick to the line.

“To be honest, it kind of reminded me of when I won the Tour de France [in 2018], the last TT was kind of like this, with the director on the radio telling me not to do anything stupid,” Thomas said.

“You start to overthink it a bit them but I’m really happy to finish it off. It’s been a great week for the team.”

In the end, Thomas finished 17 seconds down on Cavagna’s winning time of 21:54, with Paris-Nice stage winner Bissegger slotted in between at six seconds. Cavagna rode an aggressive race and was 17 seconds clear of Bissegger at the half-way point, fading a little in comparison on the second half of the course. Another rider to fade late on was prologue winner Rohan Dennis (Ineos Grenadiers), who was in the mix at the checkpoint but had to settle for ninth place. His teammate, and the current world champion, Filippo Ganna was a couple of seconds slower to make it four in the top-10 for Ineos.

Deceuninck-QuickStep themselves had three, with Mattia Cattaneo joining Cavagna and Masnada. That only left room for Team DSM’s young talent Ilan Van Wilder, who produced another impressive performance to take fourth, and Soler, who got everything out of himself but fell one agonizing second short of the final podium.  

As for those overall standings, Thomas wins the Tour de Romandie by 28 seconds from Porte, with Masnada third at 38 seconds. After Soler, Woods slipped to fifth at 43 seconds, with O’Connor in sixth the only other rider within a minute of Thomas. Ion Izaguirre (Astana-Premier Tech), Lucas Hamilton (BikeExchange), Damiano Caruso (Bahrain Victorious) and Wilco Kelderman (Bora-Hansgrohe) were all unchanged at the lower end of the top-10.

How it unfolded

Although the day started out brightly, it wasn’t long before the clouds gathered and gave what had been a washout of a week its fitting finale. The early starters managed to avoid the worst of the rain, possibly handing the likes of Cavagna and Bissegger an advantage but, the downpour soon came.

Strangely, the first section of the course remained largely dry, as did the final rise to the line, but out in the middle were roads so wet that riders’ wheels kicked up significant spray. At one point, the rain was pelting down, but it did back off by the time the overall contenders hit the course.

The course itself was a tricky affair, starting with a technical descent followed immediately by a steep 700-metre cobbled climb. The road then rolled before dragging up on the wet roads to the intermediate checkpoint at the half-way mark. After another rolling section came the sweeping 3km descent into Fribourg, and the kick up through the old town in the final kilometre.

Claudio Imhof (Swiss national team) was the first rider down the ramp at 12:17 local time, but it was Bissegger who was always expected to set the benchmark among the early starters. He duly obliged, clocking 22 minutes, which looked even more impressive a little while later when the world champion Ganna rolled home at a deficit of 31 seconds.

It wasn’t long before Cavagna was out on course and, having come close in various time trials this year, he started his intentions at the intermediate, where he was 17 seconds to the good. He lost a little in the second part of the course but it was more than enough.

Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ) was one of the specialists who was unable to make an impact. That was ultimately true of Dennis, despite the prologue winner appearing right in the thick of it at the half-way mark. By that point, however, the rain was still coming down.

Van Wilder caught the eye with his ride but it was soon time for the GC battle. The riders in the lower half of the top 10 all held their own and held their positions but there was plenty of potential for movement higher up. Masnada wasn’t widely mentioned ahead of the stage but showed his continued improvement with a storming ride to post 22:15.

Porte was soon home and was one second better, meaning O’Connor and Woods would need miracles to keep their podium spots. Soler, who started the day 4th overall three seconds up on Porte, lost 14 seconds to the Australian but nevertheless will have been pleased with his effort, even if he was eventually pipped to the podium.

O’Connor gave it his all but, like Woods, always had the odds against him. He clocked 22:46, beating Woods but falling two seconds short of him in what became a battle for the top-five.

It wasn’t long into Woods’ ride that it was clear Thomas was on his way to victory, as Woods himself had predicted. The Israel Start-Up Nation rider gave it everything on the final ramp but by then Thomas was already celebrating his first win since the 2018 Tour de France.