"I felt like a bit of a knob" - Geraint Thomas admits tension in Tour of the Alps breakaway on stage 1

In a warm-up for the Giro d'Italia, Geraint Thomas has elected to race the Tour of the Alps. On the opening stage, the Welshman looked bright too, getting himself in a late move and helping teammate, Tobias Foss to the stage win.

During the stage however, Thomas and Foss came under fire from their breakaway companions due to the lack of work they were doing. "They wanted us to wait for Filippo Ganna," Thomas explained post-race on his Watts Occurring podcast. "They were telling us, 'Oh he's 20 seconds, 18 seconds, 15 seconds. He's coming back, wait for Pippo."

As mentioned however, this tactic didn't go down well with the rest of the breakaway. A number of rather frustrated exchanges between Thomas and other riders were actually caught by TV cameras too. "I felt like a bit of a knob," the former Tour de France winner admits. "You're just like sitting on and kind of missing turns."

"Most of the guys were asking and I'd have to say 'Sorry mate, genuinely the DS is telling me not to come through,'" Thomas continues. "And I see myself as quite and honest guy, I'd never just sort of make that up to try and sit on, I just had to do it... Then it got to around 4km to go and they finally were like 'he's not coming back, you boys get to race it' and we did really well! We covered moves, he won the sprint and jobs a good 'un."