How Geraint Thomas Won The Tour

Vern Pitt analyses the Welshman’s famous Tour de France victory

- Vern Pitt

A lot can happen during the Tour, and especially during the first week this year,” said Geraint Thomas following his win at the Critérium du Dauphiné just weeks before the Tour de France Grand Départ. He didn’t know how prophetic this was.

Thomas didn’t win the Tour in that week, but it would prove to be the biggest difference-maker between him and his rivals. Come the first rest day he held a lead of over a minute over most of them, and team-mate Chris Froome — the closest to him — was 59 seconds back. He did it by a combination of two things that would be seen throughout the Tour.

Positioning

The first was his positioning. While others might have sat back in the pack, you didn’t have to glance at the television pictures of the Tour for too long to see Thomas’s distinctive white Oakley Jawbones within the bubble of the first 20 or 30 riders. The Welshman’s lowest stage placing during the first nine stages, which included six bunch sprints, was 30th. His worst placing throughout the whole tour was 31st when the peloton rolled into Pau on stage 18. None of the other contenders came close to matching his consistency at being at the front, out of the wind and out of trouble.

Good luck

His lack of bad luck — an irony that surely will not be lost on him given his succession of ill fortune in Grand Tours — was the second reason he found himself atop the Tour favourites’ pile at the end of week one. Co-captain Froome lost time in a crash on stage one; Nairo Quintana and Alejandro Valverde suffered a similar, albeit more catastrophic fate that day; Tom Dumoulin lost out to a ill-timed puncture on stage six; Romain Bardet also suffered following a mechanical that day; Richie Porte crashed out of the race on stage nine. Thomas sailed through the chaos.