Geraint Thomas had the overall victory of the Giro d’Italia within reach, but on the penultimate day Primoz Roglic rode him out of the pink jersey.
The Ineos Grenadiers leader took this painful defeat sportingly.
“I’m pretty gutted,” Thomas said. “If I’d been told this in February or March, I probably would have bitten your hand off, but now I’m devastated, so… I think once it sinks in, I can be proud of what we did. It is what it is.”
“I felt OK, but with about a kilometre and a half to go, I could just feel the legs going a bit,” Thomas added. “Primoz just did an incredible ride. If anything, it’s better to lose by that much than by a couple of seconds, because then you can pick apart and say I might have done this or that. At the end of the day, I couldn’t have gone 14 seconds quicker – and he had a mechanical, too. He deserves it, and I have to be happy with second.”
“At the minute, it’s still bittersweet. But the season I’ve had, I didn’t really start racing until Catalunya in March… I stayed strong mentally and put the work in. I tried to do what I had to do, and I came here in good shape. To come second, I can still be proud of that. But, at the moment, it just hurts.”
