The first summit finish of #LaVuelta23 is complete. @ThymenArensman led us in, finishing 21" back in 15th. @GeraintThomas86 dug deep to limit his losses, finishing at 47". @Eganbernal did a great job helping his teammates in the final kilometres.
"I'm not going to give up yet" - Geraint Thomas suffers big hit on first mountain clash at Vuelta
CyclingTuesday, 29 August 2023 at 09:57
Geraint Thomas was one of the losers from the first mountain clash. He had hinted for lesser good form arriving at the Vuelta a Espana, and on the first summit finish he shed some time and took a hit in his run for the podium.
"I just didn't have it today. It didn't go well," Thomas told Eurosport. "During the first hours I felt quite okay, but on the last climb I felt I couldn't really push on. I was quite far back and had to pull out all the stops to keep from dropping.”
Read also
Ultimately the Welshman was not successful. His loss on the day was not huge, he crossed the finish line together with Egan Bernal, 47 seconds back on Remco Evenepoel. However he was 23rd on the day only, with plenty outsiders and non-GC contenders outclimbing him in Arinsal.
After this stage he sits 21st in the overall classification, 1:11 minutes down on the Belgian, however it is a very different start to that he had at the Vuelta a Espana. “Of course I'm not going to give up yet. I'm going to keep fighting. But this is certainly a day to forget."
Read also
claps 1visitors 19577
Just in
Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter today!
Nov 05, 13:04
0
Popular news
Latest comments
- And our virtual platforms allow us to "ride" famous place that we can't get to in person, which is a pretty fabulous aspect of this weird weird sport.RidesHills19-12-2024
- Which off-season are you referring to? The one after he won the Tour of California? The one after he won 3 stages and was on the podium of the Vuelta? The one after TJV screwed up, never put him away, and lost the Tour on the time trial? We've seen the guy hit the wall, lose energy, nearly fail, and lose races ("I'm dead") more than once. He's got a visible threshold and his fueling regimen is a clear weak spot. You'll need more detail to make this more than under defined insinuations .RidesHills19-12-2024
- Interesting analysis. And yet, I'm in the US, and at a recent wedding reception as a group of us older folks had to stand at a certain place to keep track of a thing, we got to talking, and every single one of us had a favorite rider, a favorite circuit of races, a moment when we fell in love with the sport, and a joy in the complexities of it all. None of us knew about the other's fandom until that moment. It's wonderful that these are my brothers-in-law, and we now know to talk about this when the spouses aren't listening. Point being: there are fans all over, and for US folks, the loss of GCN+ has been huge. As so often, it's the media bottleneck that matters more than anything else. Look at F1 in the US before Netflix, as an example.RidesHills19-12-2024
- On the one hand, what he says is trivial. Of course it's genetics. It always is, in any sport. That's just obvious. Look at Mondo Duplantis, whose sprinting speed is key to his pole vaulting, for example - he's just plain faster than other vaulters and good at the rest of the event as well. In cycling, even when you take the most genetically weird group of people and give them amazing training, some will be better than others, as well. Distributions are distributions and there are outliers and that's just that. Pogacar's body is built for this kind of thing, it seems, with him only recently having had to pick up skills that others have used all along. I'm still inclined to believe that these folks are using entirely legal means to arrive at their shockingly good performance, given how more senior riders kinda complain about (or at least comment on) the regimens and control over the nutrition and exercise and all that. And in every population, there are edge cases of truly exceptional behavior.RidesHills19-12-2024
- And it’s likely going to get worse. They are going all-out to drive away small local events which are where a lot of new riders come from. They want fee income and Olympic medals. That’s all.JoeyB19-12-2024
- Oh Lordspock12319-12-2024
- Interesting suggestion, fo you think testing Tadej’s (or Bolts’ or so many others’) parents would have given us a preview of his potential then or what criteria do you have to pick parents with?Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- Even amateur teams suffer this sort. But this is also largely due to the precarious sponsorship, in very few sports do you find kit with so many sponsors having to be integrated and changing so regularly.Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- I think it’s pretty obvious what was responsible for destroying interest that used to be there.Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- This has been stated repeatedly, MVDP for CX, road and if it already counts, gravel. Lavreysen for track. I expect as a cycling fan you’ve heard of them?Mistermaumau19-12-2024