"He knocked his head and he was told to stop" - Geraint Thomas explains what led to Filippo Ganna's stage 1 abandon at 2025 Tour de France

Geraint Thomas couldn't have dreamed of a more dramatic start to the final Tour de France of his career. On a drama filled stage 1, there were crashes galore and time loss disappointment for a number of the big GC contenders.

"Yeah it was stressful and chaotic," Thomas admitted to Eurosport post-stage, referencing the sad news that his INEOS Grenadiers teammate Filippo Ganna had been forced to abandon the Tour de France very prematurely thanks to an early crash. "Obviously, Pippo had a little crash. It looked okay at the time, but I think he might have knocked his head or something and he was told to stop. So yeah, it was not a great way to start."

Thomas himself missed the decisive split, as did INEOS' big GC hope, Carlos Rodriguez. "Going into this corner with 18km to go, I was just a bit lazy to be honest," the Welshman admits. "There were Lidl-Trek guys in front of me, Quick-Step behind and I thought 'I'll be fine, there's firepower here'. But it split, and I was sat there thinking about what I should have done. 19 years as a pro, you still make some stupid mistakes, don't you?"

"I just kind of sat back and left them to it," Thomas then says of the second group's chase. "There was a lot of guys there. Obviously, Remco Evenepoel was there, Primoz Roglic, Tim Merlier, Jonathan Milan, so I assumed we'd have a good chance of coming back. But obviously, they were going in front as well. So it is what it is."