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Geraint Thomas to skip next year’s Tour de France and target Giro d’Italia?

Team Ineos has the past three winners of the race on its roster

2018 Tour de France champion Geraint Thomas may skip next year’s race and instead target the Giro d’Italia.

This year, he finished runner-up to Team Ineos colleague Egan Bernal, and with four-time yellow jersey winner Chris Froome, who missed July’s race through injury, set to return to racing the UCI WorldTour outfit has no shortage of former champions.

Speaking ahead of today’s world championship road race, Thomas said: “I’m going to wait at least until I see the courses, the routes for the Giro and the Tour and then go from there.

“You’d think Egan would want to ride [the Tour] again, obviously, being the defending champ. Froomey, it’s his big goal, he wants to win five.

“I’m definitely not going to make a call until at least December training camp, sit down with the team. Obviously, we’ll be chatting to them before that anyway, but maybe make a call around then really.

“Even if I did the Giro, it would still certainly excite me and get me out of bed in the morning.”

Team Ineos and its predecessor, Team Sky, have won seven of the past eight editions of the Tour de France, the sequence only broken by Vincenzo Nibali’s victory in 2014.

Next year, however, they will face a challenge from a Jumbo-Visma team that not only sports Vuelta champion Primoz Roglic and Steven Kruijswijk, third at this year’s Tour de France, on its roster but has also recruited former Giro d’Italia winner Tom Dumoulin.

Team Ineos meanwhile has signed current Giro d’Italia champion Richard Carapaz from Movistar, but according to Thomas the team would be best off using the two joint leader approach that has brought it success in recent editions of the Tour.

 “I think two does work and has worked for the last two years,” he explained. “As long as we keep that same philosophy. I’ll look at both the routes and see what motivates me and see what the other guys are thinking as well. And then just go from there.”

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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Kapelmuur | 4 years ago
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I wanted Thomas to be the first Brit to win Roubaix, unless we can claim Backstedt now.

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Jackson | 4 years ago
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I reckon he should quit GTs and go back to the classics. A few years ago people were saying he could win Flanders. Sounds more fun as well (beer, frites, can go to the beach in July, etc).

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Welsh boy | 4 years ago
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It sounds like a sensible idea to me but what do I know, I thought Thomas was mad not concentrating on the one day classics and going for the tour!

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