Geraint Thomas shares sympathy with Wout van Aert: "It's sh*t when you've got that TV camera in your face and you're struggling"

Wout van Aert's Giro d'Italia debut hasn't exactly gone to plan so far. The 30-year-old Belgian leader of the Team Visma | Lease a Bike team has long been one of the biggest names in the peloton, but after a pre-Giro illness, Van Aert is yet to truly show his best form at the Italian Grand Tour.

Although Van Aert came within a whisker of the stage win on the opening day, narrowly losing out to Mads Pedersen, the Belgian's level has since gone downhill dramatically. A disappointing time trial by his own high standards followed on stage 2, then the Visma star was dropped notably early on stage 3, not even mixing it up in the sprint for the win. Unable to really make a mark in support of teammate Olav Kooij on stage 4, Van Aert has been garnering a lot of attention this Giro, but not all for the right reasons.

Geraint Thomas, a podium finisher at the last two editions of the Giro d'Italia, has been watching the drama unfold from home this time around and the Welshman has sympathy for the struggles Van Aert is going through.

"It's a shame to see Wout get dropped. He's just not 100% is he?" Thomas asks rhetorically on the latest episode of his Watts Occurring podcast. "It's just sad to see, because it's horrible when you're in that position - such a big rider and everyone is watching you and you're just suffering."

A former Tour de France winner, Thomas knows all about the pressures of expectation when things aren't quite going right in the big races. "I'm not saying I'm as big a rider as him or Remco Evenepoel and that, but even when I've been in that situation it is shit," explains the INEOS Grenadiers leader. "You're going up a climb, you're getting spat out and you've got that TV camera in your face and everyone's watching you and you're just suffering. You just want to be anywhere else. But, Wout is a fighter isn't he! Getting that second place already, so hopefully he gets better."