Tour de France 2018: Geraint Thomas is good enough to win it, but he’s geared up to support

The final month of each summer term at Whitchurch High School was agonising for Geraint Thomas.

He would clock-watch to the end of the school day before sprinting home for the final moments of each day’s Tour de France stage. Growing up, Jan Ullrich was an unlikely idol. “He was the underdog and it’s quite a British thing to support the underdog,” he says.

At Team Sky, it is a similar tag for Thomas. He knows he goes into tomorrow’s Tour start in Noirmoutier-en-l’Ile as the team’s glorified plan B behind Chris Froome.

It is a position Richie Porte has been in before as a Sky team-mate-turned-team leader at BMC, and the Australian says of Thomas: “In any other team, Geraint would be the outright leader. I’d love him to do well. He’s one of the most normal guys you’ll meet in the peloton.”

The pair have exchanged text messages during their respective Tour warm-up wins: Porte at the Tour de Suisse and Thomas at the Criterium du Dauphine, a race Froome won before three of his four Tour successes.

Thomas says: “I’m probably in the best shape I’ve ever been in going into the Tour. Winning such a hilly race against some of the world’s best climbers is a massive boost.”

Froome starts freed from the shackles of a potential doping ban, having been cleared to compete only this week following his high salbutamol reading at last year’s Vuelta a Espana by cycling’s world governing body, the UCI.

But there remains the question of how he will fare after a victorious but arduous Giro d’Italia.

And Thomas warns the reaction of the local Tour crowds, particularly in light of race organisers ASO effectively saying they did not want Froome to compete, may get frosty. The team were roundly booed at the official unveiling yesterday, a portent of things to come.

“It could go either way,” he says. “You get those out to abuse people, but I don’t pay attention as long as they’re not touching you or throwing stuff.”

Thomas describes the leaking of Froome’s confidential Vuelta test, in which he was found to have double the permitted dose of the asthma drug in his system, as bad for him and the wider sport. Often outspoken about doping and therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs), even against his own team-mates, Thomas says Froome has his full backing.

“I never believed he’d gone out of his way to cheat,” says the 32-year-old Olympian. “It was just about trying to prove reasons how that result happened. He was always okay to keep racing as he’d done nothing wrong.”

While everything Froome has touched has turned to gold at the grand tours, Thomas has been less fortunate. Last year, he donned the Tour’s yellow jersey for the opening four days, a career high to match his Dauphine win.

But all the good work was undone when he was brought down dramatically on stage nine by Polish rider Rafael Majka, breaking his collarbone. His Giro hopes had also effectively ended a few weeks earlier after being part of another crash, this time involving a parked motorbike.

“I knew straight away something was wrong,” says Thomas of his Tour crash. “The doc told me my collarbone was broken but I still got back on before realising it wasn’t right. I ended up stopping 10k later. It wasn’t the best day.”

What is possible for Thomas on his best day at the Tour is unclear, in part because of Froome. Should the four-times winner be at his peak, he knows he will have to play second fiddle, but should he struggle, Thomas would become leader.

“I love being a leader and having the team behind you,” he says. “Particularly a team like Sky, that’s so strong. It’s a nice pressure to have. But I don’t know how it will be. The team have said I should get my chance. We’ll get to the Alps and see. A lot can happen.”

Having seen him at close quarters, Thomas is not about to downplay his team leader’s chances. “We don’t know how he’ll be, but we saw at the Giro that you can never write him off,” he says.

For Thomas, he hopes to be at the front of a race he dreamt of competing in as a kid, especially now he has a sense of belonging among the best.

“I remember the first time riding up there on a mountain stage with Alberto Contador and those sorts of guys,” he says. “It was raining and I took the group up to the finish. That was a buzz. That’s the sort of stuff you dream of.”

Chris Froome will once more be the favourite for this year’s Tour de France, and is bidding for a record-equalling fifth victory. Standard Sport spoke to three lead riders to find out how to dethrone Team Sky’s star man (above) on the French roads from tomorrow...

‘united, we can make him crack’

Richie Porte (Australia, BMC Racing)

“He’s a brilliantly talented rider and you saw at the Giro how strong he is psychologically with all the noise that’s been going on around him. Plus, he’s got a superstar team, with riders like Wout Poels and Geraint Thomas, who would lead other teams in their own right. But Froome’s human. He’s hard to beat but it’s certainly not impossible. I think the trick is to go for an us versus them idea, and I don’t just mean BMC against Sky, but all the other top riders together — and there’s a lot of challengers for the win at the Tour — to work to make him crack.”

‘first nine days will be vital’

Adam Yates (GB, Mitchelton-Scott)

“How do you beat Froome? It’s a good question, and not one we’ve managed to successfully answer. For me, it’s about the strength of the team around you. I feel like I’m going to be looked after pretty well, and that we’ll be able to cause Froome and Team Sky some trouble. There are opportunities in those opening nine days to attack, and we’ve got some big, powerful guys to do just that. Simon [twin brother] had the edge on him for much of the Giro but beating him wasn’t ultimately something he managed to do at the Giro, but I think we learned a lot there as a team.”

‘test his tiredness after giro’

Mikel Landa (Spain, Movistar)

“Like every year at the Tour de France, Froome starts the race as the favourite. He’s won the Giro d’Italia, he’s finished that race in great form as we saw and I’m sure he’ll be strong again for the start of the Tour. Saying that, he’ll at least start in strong form but he might pay after his efforts in the Giro during the final week, and we can all hope he’s tired. We need to test that tiredness as well as the race goes on, particularly that last week where the legs should be hurting badly.”