Thomas de Gendt reveals 2022 stage win in Giro d'Italia as "the last thing I expected"

The breakaway master escapist Thomas de Gendt seems to be ready for another season at World Tour level getting close to his first training camp with the team. The veteran 36 years old Belgian already had a good amount of ups and downs in his career and in a Q&A (questions and answers) tweet he did on his personal Twitter page he opened up a bit about them.

The very popular cyclist received a lot of questions, mostly related to his breakaway wins. In a question about what was the most emotional one, he replied the 8th stage in 2022 Giro d'Italia , "After many bad days and a lot of illness, a victory in a big tour was the last thing I expected", he stated.

Other questions focused also on the particular curious breakaway in 2021 edition of Paris-Nice, where 11 Flemish riders, including Victor Campenaerts, Oliver Naesen, Yves Lampaert and Thomas De Gendt himself stormed the front of the peloton in the French stage race and tried to break away.

"We will have a meeting in the group app", replied De Gendt to that topic. Other questions where about the most funny rider in the peloton witch he answered "There are a lot of them". And who was his favorite companion and to this question De Gendt invoked the name of another legendary breakaway escape artist, Jens Voigt,

About which loss in a cycling race hurt the most, De Gendt reveled to be "Brabantse Pijl 2010. I was the fastest man in the sprint and I was 100 per cent sure of that. Until I suddenly got cramps in the last hundred meters of the race and was passed with twenty meters to go. That's the only race I still think back on".