It’s the cycling generation of perennial winners: Tadej Pogačar hasn’t finished outside the top-three in his first of five race days of the season, and his adversary Jonas Vingegaard thrashed the field to win his first two stage races.
But the idea and expectation of needing to be in race-winning form all season long doesn’t apply to Geraint Thomas, for the veteran Welshman is slowly building his condition once again, further cementing his reputation as the bike rider who timea their best form to perfection.
For the past 20 years, the Ineos Grenadiers rider has made a career of peaking at the right moment, the latest example coming last season when he almost won the Giro d’Italia after an uninspiring spring that didn’t deliver results but fine-tuned his condition.
The 37-year-old is targeting both the Giro and the Tour de France this season, and he’s as confident as ever that he’ll arrive at both Grand Tours in the physical shape he needs to be in.
“It’s easy to take for granted that nine times out of 10 I hit my goals, and that I am in the shape I want to be in when I get there,” Thomas told Cycling Weekly at the Volta a Catalunya.
“OK, other things might come into play once you’re there, but it’s still hard to do, especially these days because every race is so hard. I’m not going to get too complacent, I need to keep pushing, and try to get to the Giro in top shape.
“Everyone is different but now everyone is within 90% of their best [shape at races] and they stay within that. I find to be 100% I need to be down around 60%. That way of working is something I’ve always had since my track days, since I was a junior, so it’s just normal for me.”
Watching Pogačar and Vingegaard, as well as the likes of Remco Evenepoel, dominating races in the early part of the season, however, does bring with it potential pitfalls. “Everyone is going well from the start of the year,” Thomas continued, “so mentally you need to stay strong, because it would be easy to crack a bit and say, ‘woah, I can’t do this anymore’ because you want to be in the thick of the race, and you don’t want to be suffering all of the time.”
Thomas described his current form as “better than where I was this time last year”, and admitted that he is spending more time at the moment thinking about the Giro than the Tour because “it’s the first one and the one I am building up to now.”
Ineos’ main man will be among a handful of GC riders who will be fancied to land a spot on the podium at the Giro, and though he isn’t naive to Pogačar being the outstanding favourite to win the maglia rosa, neither is he predicting an easy win for the Slovenian.
“Jonas and Pog are the two standout riders when it comes to Grand Tour stage racing at the minute, and the rest of us I’d say are in the same ballpark and anyone can get a result,” he said.
“The good thing about Grand Tours is that a lot can happen. Pog and Jonas are strong physically, they have great teams around them, but still anything can happen, it’s just about staying on it and getting yourself in the right place.”
(Image credit: Getty Images)
When conversation turns to how he would improve cycling, Thomas, who won the Tour in 2018, points out what many others have said before him.
“I think more than anything from a governing point of view,” he opined. “More sustainable, more profitable for teams. We have seen so many teams come and go and it’s a bit of an old school way. Everyone has their own interests, the teams, the riders, the race organisers, the sponsors, the UCI, it’s lining that up a bit more and making it more appealing to teams, making it more profitable. That would grow the sport.”
Over the winter, half of the men’s WorldTour teams have been trying to force through plans to create a new cycling league with investment from Saudi Arabia. Thomas said that “I’ve not heard anything about that, but I am all for exploring new ideas. That’s the way everything evolves by looking at different ways of doing things. I don’t know the specifics at all, but I am definitely not against thinking outside the box.
“Something might sound wacky to start with, but when we wore skinsuits and filled-in helmets at the team time trial in Tour of Qatar in 2010, everybody looked at us as if we had four heads, and now that’s just normal, it’s weird if you don’t do it.
“In general we ride quicker, but everything else as well, with nutrition, the way of training, the equipment, everything is moving on, you have to keep moving with the times.”