Geraint Thomas is still motivated to fight for one last stage win at the Tour de France in his final appearance at the race before retirement.
The Welshman spent hours in the breakaway en route to the Mûr-de-Bretagne on Friday, but ultimately it was to no avail, after the move was caught before the finish. The foiled attack has not deterred the 39-year-old, though, who made clear that he plans to go again in the mountains in the second half of the race.
"I’ll certainly try," Thomas said. "On the mental side, I’m up for it and I’ll give it a good bash, but at the end of the day it comes down to legs, doesn’t it? So we’ll see. It would be amazing to win a stage, but as long as the team performs then that’s the main thing."
Despite not winning in the opening seven stages, and not having anyone in the top 10 on GC, the mood around the Ineos Grenadiers bus seems upbeat in France, particularly regarding the prospects of Carlos Rodríguez, the team's lead GC rider.
"I think this first week has certainly not been suited to his strengths at all," Thomas said of the Spaniard. "Someone said on the bus that we’ve still got 75% of the climbing to come in this race, so for him I think he can still stay positive and look forward to that and hopefully that will show come the end.
"Hopefully if there’s a high pace in the mountains then Carlos can benefit from that… We haven’t done any big mountains yet and that’s his strength, so hopefully we can start climbing up the GC next week."
Some of the boost in morale might be due to the return of Dave Brailsford, the Team Sky mastermind, to the Jim Ratcliffe-backed team. "He [Brailsford] brings a different intensity to it and a different way of thinking and looking at things," Thomas said. "He’s got the most experience there, so it’s great to have him around."
Thomas has had a front row seat in recent years to witness the rivalry between Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard. The duo have already contested two stages at this race, with Pogačar edging out the Dane in Mûr-de-Bretagne. Asked about the pair, Thomas likened the contest between Pogačar and Vingegaard’s teams, Visma-Lease a Bike and UAE Team Emirates-XRG, to some of the clashes that Team Sky had with rival squads during Chris Froome’s reign at the Tour.
"We were similar with Movistar and things," he said. "But we had a slightly different mentality and would just do what needs to be done in the first half of the race. We were definitely a lot more conservative compared to now, where UAE and Visma look for any opportunity to go hard.
"Everyone’s talking about how Visma want it hard all the time to try and crack Pogačar, maybe because that’s happened once, but I don’t know if he’ll crack. But this hard racing is only going to hurt a lot of people come the end."
