Tag: Geraint Thomas

Tour de France Diary: What Happened to the Team Ineos (Sky)Train on Stage 6?

On By Spencer MartinIn Cycling1 Comment

Geraint Thomas removed any lingering doubts about his form when he threw down an incredibly impressive performance by distancing every major rival on the brutally steep La Planche des Belles Filles. Some had questioned how the lackluster form Thomas’ displayed so far in 2019, an assurgent young teammate, and the lack of preparation racing would affect his chances, but the Welshman answered those questions in a few short minutes on Thursday and appears to be the favorite to take the overall for the second year running.

While Thomas might be back on the form that saw him dominate the 2018 edition, his Ineos’ team trademark train was notably absent on the final climb. Wout Poels was dropped on the day’s penultimate climb and Ineos was down to one helper shortly after starting the final climb.

It is possible this is an incredibly measured strategy to save energy for the brutal third week. However, when we consider the team’s lackluster performance in the team time trial, where they lost a whopping 20-seconds to Jumbo-Visma, the fact that they are simply not as strong as years past is a very real possibility.

With a full 4km left on the final climb on stage 6, viewers were treated to the highly unusual sight of Ineos not leading the peloton up a climb at the Tour de France. When Alejandro Valverde went to the front to drive the pace for his Movistar teammates, we knew something was seriously amiss.

Screenshot 2019-07-11 at 4.19.37 PM

A little over a kilometer later, Ineos was on the front, but the pace had lagged to the point that attacks were able to come over the top and immediately get distance off the front. We can even see Michal Kwiatkowski, leading the peloton, radioing back to the team car in a sign of mild panic and confusion.Screenshot 2019-07-11 at 4.20.50 PM

Less than a kilometer later, Kwiatkowski was dropped while the team’s two leaders, Thomas and Egan Bernal, were left to fend for themselves on the wheels of Groupama–FDJ (just let that sink in for a minute).

Screenshot 2019-07-11 at 4.21.19 PM

Thomas ultimately nullified any potential issues the lack of team strength presented with his individual strength, but it is certainly something to keep an eye on as the race advances. Ineos has kept the race on an extremely tight leash in Tour’s past, and if they aren’t able to do the same this year, Thomas could be forced to deal with attacks and isolation in a way he wasn’t during his winning ride in 2018.

Other Notes:

  • Richie Porte finished with Egan Bernal, Adam Yates and Jakob Fuglsang 9-seconds behind Thomas on stage 6. While his Trek Team’s dismal performance in the stage 2 TTT put him in a serious hole, the Tasmanian is flying under the radar and appears to be riding as well as he has all season.
  • Nairo Quintana limited his loses to 7-seconds on a stage 6 finish that certainly didn’t suit him.  This is likely one of his best chances to win the race overall and he looks to have sorted out the form issues that have plagued him for the past few seasons. Keep an eye on the slight Colombian when the race hits the high mountains.
  • If Thomas won the battle for the general classification on stage 6, Thibaut Pinot came in a close second. The French rider appears to be as relaxed and on form as we’ve ever seen him.
  • Current race leader Giulio Ciccone has a substantial gap on the serious climbers and time trialists. The young Italian is certainly a talented climber and it will be interesting to see how long he can hold Yellow. I have a feeling it will be for much longer than the conventional wisdom is giving him.
  • Thursday’s stage 6 saw the likely end of GC riders for Romain Bardet and Vincenzo Nibali. This is great news for fans as the two riders will look to animate the race in the third week as they hunt for spectacular stage wins.

Geraint Thomas Should Be Worried About Egan Bernal

On By Spencer MartinIn Cycling1 Comment

Geraint Thomas is heading into the 2019 Tour de France as the defending champion and odds-on favorite to win the race. Chris Froome, Thomas’ Ineos teammate and biggest challenger for victory, will miss the race due to severe injuries sustained at a crash during the Critérium du Dauphiné. With his biggest competition missing the race and the world’s strongest team at his disposal, Thomas should be feeling comfortable and confident in a repeat victory and the fans should be preparing for yet another mind-numbing processions.

Fortunately for us, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The path to victory in the 2019 Tour cracking wide open and the race is shaping up to be the most wide-open edition in years. However, the one constant is that Thomas’ biggest challenge is still coming from inside his own team, only now it’s via the young Colombian sensation Egan Bernal.

Thomas crashed out of the Tour de Suisse on the fourth stage, which further complicated the Ineos team hierarchy following Froome’s accident. Things got even more interesting when Bernal went on to win Suisse in dominant fashion. The youngster never appeared under pressure, put time into Rohan Dennis in the mountains and held off the World Time Trial Champion in the race’s lone effort against the clock.

While Thomas will reportedly recover fast enough to start the Tour, his form has yet to click this year and his legs will certainly miss the quality racing the remaining days of Suisse will provide. He is stuck in reverse while the competition is speeding off the start line.

For reference, the last rider to win the Tour de France (defined as crossing the line as the winner in Paris) without finishing either the Dauphine or Tour de Suisse was Marco Pantani in 1998. Of course, Pantani completed the historic double that season and was coming off a Giro d’Italia win. The last rider to win the Tour de France without previously completing the Dauphine, Suisse, or the Giro d’Italia was Miguel Indurain in 1991. It is worth noting that Indurian had already completed the Vuelta a Espana, which in those years took place in early Spring. This means Thomas is heading into the Tour with fewer quality race days in his legs than any past winner in the modern era.

Bernal has potentially been overhyped as the ‘next big thing’ by the cycling media, but his display of combined climbing/TT strength at Suisse should send fear through the competition. Thomas could very well see his bid for a back-to-back thwarted by a teammate, but being outranked by an unproven rider in his early 20s will sting a lot more than by a veteran champion like Froome.

It is important to remember there is a danger of being too sharp, too early, heading into a Grand Tour (see: Primoz Roglic/Giro 2019), but Bernal has looked like the world’s best climber without hitting his best form. Going into a Tour that will be won nearly exclusively on the climbs and team time trial, he has to feel incredibly confident about his chances. Bernal never appeared under pressure during his winning ride at Suisse and was able to ride away from the competition whenever he needed to while looking like he had a few gears in reserve. Most importantly, he limited his losses in the stage 8 time trial to a second per kilometer to Dennis.

Thomas is putting on a brave face but he would be an extreme historical outliner if he went on to win the Tour de France after DNF-ing Suisse. Not to mention the time missed training this week as he recovers from his fall and the difficulty of coming back from direct impacts to the head (according to team doctors, Thomas’ head took the brunt of the crash).

Prior to his crash at the Dauphine, betting markets and Ineos boss Dave Brailsford considered Froome the favorites for a fifth career Tour win in July, so his absence was supposed to be the perfect scenario for the defending champion. With Froome on the sidelines, Thomas was losing a rival and gaining and domestique. Now, with his diminished capacity due to the untimely rest period, the door has been left wide-open for Bernal.

Bernal was originally slated to lead Ineos at the Giro, but an unfortunate (a little too unfortunate if you ask me) collarbone fracture meant he had to shift priorities to the Tour. This set up a massively interesting three-leader scenario for Ineos that promised inter-team tensions that would slowly simmer throughout the three weeks. However, Ineos’ three-leader selection looks like incredible foresight now that they’ve had their four-time winner crash out, their defending champion suffer a devastating setback, and still come out the other side with a viable threat for overall victory in Bernal.

This displays seriously impressive team depth but means there is very little room for error for even the most accomplished riders. Twelve months after taking the win of his career, Thomas finds himself in an eerily similar position; heading to the Tour warding a threat from within his own team.

 

The Upcoming Tour de France Gets More Interesting by the Day

On By Spencer MartinIn Cycling2 Comments

Back in January, I wrote that the Giro d’Italia had the potential to outshine the Tour de France in 2019. With a large field of exciting young talent and the (in)famously chaotic and unpredictable Italian terrain, the Giro seemed poised to topple the Tour, which has become a bit of a snoozefest in recent years.

When that original piece was written, the 2018 Tour de France runner-up Tom Dumoulin and 21-year old Egan Bernal were both targeting the Giro d’Italia. However, Dumoulin was forced to leave the Giro following a crash on stage 4. While this seriously dampened the fight for the general classification in Italy,  it adds fuel to the Tour’s GC fire.

Meanwhile, Egan Bernal ‘broke’ his collarbone a week before the start of the Giro. This means he will likely line up as a legitimate leader of Team INEOS’, who are already struggling to balance the ambitious of last year’s winner Geraint Thomas and 4-time winner Chris Froome.

There were mummers that the Colombian sensation would be lining up at the Tour all the way back in March. I believe this was the INEOS team brass sending up a trial balloon as they looked for an insurance policy as their aging superstar duo struggled through their worst spring campaigns in years.

Since Bernal is already back on the bike and setting PRs on training climbs less than two weeks after breaking his collarbone, it is safe to assume he is going to line up at the Tour de France (which features a route perfect for Bernal with a high-altitude, numerous climbs and a mere 27km of TTs).

I personally subscribe to the fringe conspiracy theory that Bernal and INEOS faked the collarbone break as cover to duck the Giro and get their best climber at the Tour without seriously damaging Thomas’ and Froome’s egos (who have both been quietly struggling to find form in recent months). Bernal’s incredibly quick recovery could potentially support this crackpot idea (release the x-rays!).

All of this combines to give us a fantastically dramatic backdrop for this summer’s Tour. Having three legitimate contenders on one team will be thrilling to watch and could potentially dull the team’s unmatchable strength. The INEOS riders give all the right answers through gritted smiles, but the tension will simmer under the surface and they will have to make due will fewer domestiques and team organization in critical moments (see: Froome’s lack of a full team while chasing after his crash on stage 1 of the 2018 Tour).

The addition of fresh (and hopefully healthy) Dumoulin, the best GC rider under the age of 30, makes this even more interesting. Dumoulin’s focus on the Giro was always a strange fit since he won the race back in 2017 and seems poised to take the title of the best grand tour rider on the planet from Froome. His preparation for the Giro seemed off and it felt like he was hedging to leave something for the Tour, while Primoz Roglic came in red, red, hot, and looks impossible to beat at the moment. The only way he can advance his career and raise his profile is a Tour de France title, so as sad as it is to see him drop off of the Giro, this short-term loss could pay major dividends in July.

Saturday’s Climb to Mende Could Reveal Team Sky’s True Leader

On By Spencer MartinIn Cycling2 Comments

Heading into stage 14 at the 2018 Tour de France, Team Sky is facing an old-fashioned leadership crisis. Chris Froome, looking for a record-tying fifth Tour title, is trailing his teammate Geraint Thoms by 1:39, and has the formidable cheekbones of Tom Dumoulin lurking a mere 11-seconds back. Most viewers are looking ahead to the brutal Pyrenees to decide Sky’s leader once and for all, but few are looking at the stages through the Massif Central, especially Saturday’s steep final pitch in Mende.

The three-kilometer climb comes right before the finish, averages a 10 percent gradient and will see the peloton hit the climb relatively fresh after a slow-rolling the first 2/3rds of the stage. It will offer no chance for the overall contenders to hide, and everyone’s form will be laid bare for the world to see. Potential gaps won’t be large, but they could be a bellwether for things to come in the higher mountains.

While Thomas and Sky are publically saying Froome is still the leader, Thomas has put time into Froome everytime the road has titled skywards and Thomas has just won consecutive mountain stages, the latest being atop the legendary Alpe D’Huez while wearing the Yellow Jersey. Only three riders have ever won consecutive mountaintop-finishes, and nobody has ever won on the Alpe in the leader’s jersey.  We can’t rule out a catastrophic third-week collapse, or a spat of bad luck,  but the chances are not looking good for Froome’s chances after such a dominant display in the mountains by Thomas.

When the Tour visited a carbon copy of tomorrow’s finish back in 2015, Steve Cummings schooled Romain Bardet and Thibault Pinot to win the stage from the break, but back in the GC group, Chris Froome marked the early moves on the steep pitches, and then proceeded to shred the overall favorites on the flat final few hundred meters.

giphy

If Thomas gets frisky and drops his rivals while Froome struggles behind, we could see Sky make a subtle tactical shift before the race heads into the final week. But if Froome can put on a display similar to 2015, it could be the initial rumblings that a comeback could be brewing. However, if they finish on the same time, we will have to wait for the Pyrenees to chose their leader for them.

A Fit and Lucky Geraint Thomas Is Turning into Froome’s Biggest Rival

On By Spencer MartinIn CyclingLeave a comment

With six days in the can at the 2018 Tour de France, Team Sky is sitting at the top of the list of overall contenders. They have a rider three seconds behind Greg Van Avermaet, who has been kind enough to keep their Yellow Jersey warm for the race’s opening week. This scenario is par for the course for the British squad and barely merits a mention in a first week Tour de France piece. However, there is a major wrinkle in the plan this year. The leader sitting in pole position with sparkling form is former Sky domestique, Geraint Thomas, while the four-time Tour de France champion Chris Froome sits close to a minute down in 14th overall.

While we saw Thomas ahead of Froome during the Tour’s first week last year, it was by a mere twelve seconds, and the moment the road tipped skyward, Thomas stumbled and ceded the overall lead to Froome. But as of stage 6 in 2018, Thomas hasn’t put a foot wrong and currently sits second overall, a full minute (technically 59 seconds) ahead of Froome. Most importantly, he outperformed the former champion on the first big climbing test. The stage 6 finish on the slopes of the Mur-de-Bretagne saw Thomas finish five seconds in front of Froome. The eye-test revealed an even bigger gulf in form than the final results let on. Thomas looked incredibly strong and appeared to even be a legitimate contender for the stage, while Froome dangled off the back. The Welshman looked appears to be on the form of his life, while Froome appeared fatigued from his recent Giro d’Italia victory.

While the climb is much shorter and more explosive than the high alpine slopes where the race will be decided, the Mur has proven to be a reliable bellwether of climbing performance later in the race. In the Mur’s past two appearances, the eventual race winner has been present in the front group of finishers. Froome’s absence in the lead group could be a sign of things to come later in the race.

The gulf between the two riders even has the potential to widen before the Tour hits its first real mountain stage when the peloton hits the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix during Stage 9 on Sunday. Thomas was once a legitimate classics contender, and while he has slimmed down and lost raw power since those days, he still posses deft bike handling and an ability to read the treacherous cobblestones. It stands to reason that Thomas will be able to pull out even more time over the more traditional GC contenders who have little-to-no experience on the brutal cobblestones. While anything could happen on Sunday’s stage, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Thomas head into the first rest day with a sizeable advantage. This scenario would wreak havoc on Sky’s team dynamics and Froome’s ability to mount a long-range attack similar to his coupe on stage 19 of the Giro d’Italia. A lot was made of Movistar’s decision to bring three leaders to the 2018 edition, but not enough attention was paid to the leadership tussle that was set up when Sky designated Froome and Thomas co-leaders.

This co-leadership situation raises a number of complications and theoretical questions. For example, what if Froome had suffered misfortune like Tom Dumoulin and Romain Bardet at the base of stage 6’s finishing climb? What would the team have done? Would Thomas feel compelled, or be forced, to sit up and wait for his teammate, or would Sky be true to their “co-leader” word and let Thomas ride away from a four-time champion while he waited for a wheel change?

Many have been saying Froome comes into form later in grand tour’s and the early setup is nothing to worry about. There is only one issue with this argument, it isn’t true. While he came back with a stunning late-race comeback in the 2018 Giro, he traditionally pulls out his winning margins in the first 10 days of a race.

In 2016, 2015, and 2013, Froome took a significant chunk of his winning margin in the first 10 stages. In 2013, Froome took 40% of his winning margin to Quintana on the first mountaintop finish of Ax 3 Domaines, on Stage 8. In 2015, at La Pierre-Saint-Martin, Froome took 88% of his eventual winning margin to Quintana on Stage 10.

2016 deviated slightly from this template. Froome won the first mountain stage into Luchon, a shocking downhill victory, netting 23 seconds. This gap was only roughly 9% of his winning margin and the first big gaps had to wait until individual time trial on Stage 13. In 2017, he used the steep slopes of La Planche des Belles Filles on stage 5, and a slight time bonus on stage 9 to carve out an 18-second lead by the stage 10 mark, which turned out to be 33% of his final margin.

Screenshot 2018-07-13 at 9.02.20 AM

While Thomas is obviously a massively talented cyclist with a mind-boggling set of skills, and looked on incredible form at June’s Dauphine Libere, he has an abysmal track record in three-week grand tours. He’s never stood on a podium at a grand tour, and his biggest result on the road is the overall win at the aforementioned Dauphine Libere. It is incredibly risky to suppress Froome’s chances of pulling back time in the name of backing an unproven Thomas for victory. Even if Froome has free reign to ride his own race in the mountains, he certainly won’t have access to the team’s vast firepower to wind up a long-range attack like we witnessed at the Giro.

The co-leadership situation with Thomas, at one point an abstract way to repay a loyal teammate for years of service, is starting to look like a major liability to Froome’s potential, and record-tying, fifth Tour de France title. It is too early to draw any definitive conclusions, but Sky could have a legitimate leadership controversy by the time the race heads into the Pyrénées during the third week.

Tuesday Morning Power Rankings: Three Riders Trending Up and Down This Spring

On By Spencer MartinIn Cycling2 Comments

The early season racing in Australia and the Persian Gulf is behind us which means the “real” professional cycling season is finally underway. We are less than a week away from Milan Sanremo, or “La Classicissima,” the first monument of the season, so it is time to finally take stock of where we are and who are the riders to watch for the coming weeks.

First up on the roll call are three riders whose futures are trending down as we head into one of the most critical points of the spring season.

Trending Down

Tom Dumoulin
Dumoulin may be feeling a slight hangover from his dream 2017 that saw him win the World Time Trial Championship, become the first ever Dutch winner of the Giro d’Italia and a media darling in the process. However, his 2018 hasn’t been as kind. The best way to describe his 2018 so far is that the pressure of being a newfound star appears to be getting in the head of the usually charismatic Dutchman. On top of his Abu Dhabi Tour meltdown, he recently crashed out of Tirreno-Adriatico on stage 5 and he is doubtful to appear at Saturday’s Milan Sanremo. This is certainly not the preparation he was hoping for heading into an attempt to defend his Giro d’Italia crown in May. A successful defense of the Italian Grand Tour looks like a longer and longer shot with every passing race and if the Dutchman doesn’t turn it around soon, he may be forced to write off the spring and turn his focus to the Tour in July.

Geraint Thomas
When Geraint Thomas found himself ensconced in the Maglia Azzurra during stage 5 at Tirreno-Adriatico, he must have felt like something wasn’t quite right and disaster was around the corner. Since the Welshman has abandoned his promising one-day Classics career to chase the stage racing dragon, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong (see here, here, and here). His Team Sky teammates literally had the wheels fall off at the Tirreno team time trial last year. This fiasco ended up costing him the overall win. He then went on to crash out of both the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France. Not to be deterred, Thomas set his sights on winning the 2018 Giro d’Italia, only to have his superstar teammate Chris Froome wave him off and declare now that he had thought about it, he was going to be the leader at both the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France (this means that for four straight Grand Tours no other Team Sky rider was given their own chance to win. THIS IS INSANE! Froome was  basically asking for a mutiny at that point.)

Thomas had put all of this behind him and actually out-ridden his team leader Froome at the summit finish on stage 4 to declare himself the new alpha at Sky. Unfortunately, this all came crashing down around him with one kilometer to go as his chain inexplicably slipped off his chainring and he was left yelling on the side of the road, waiting for a new bike as his rivals disappeared up the road. His Team Sky leadership was over almost as quickly as it had arrived and Thomas is now left to emotionally pick up the pieces of an almost comically cursed stage-racing career.

I don’t in any way doubt Thomas’ physical ability as a Grand Tour rider, but he is 31 years old, on the most talented stage racing team ever assembled and has never finished higher than 15th in a Grand Tour. One can’t but feel like time is running out on his ill-fated stage racing career and wonder what may have been had he had remained on promising Classics trajectory. Even if Froome’s adverse analytical finding sees him unable to race the Giro and Tour this season, the stable of talented young riders on Sky is lining up to push out Thomas. Exhibit A: Earlier this season, Thomas’ “teammate” Michal Kwiatkowski jumped up the road on the final stage Volta Algarve to take the leader’s jersey right off the Welshman’s back.

Chris Froome
The only rider having a worse week than Geraint Thomas is Chris Froome. Froome came into the season with many questioning whether he should even be lining up due to his ongoing case from his adverse analytical finding (aka he had too much of an allowed drug in his system and has to explain how so much of it got there) during last year’s Vuelta a Espana.

Putting all of that aside, right now Froome’s biggest problem is that he has stunk on the bike so far this season. He was 10th at the Ruta del Sol, a race that he had won the last time he attended in 2013, and has been consistently off the pace of the top group at Tirreno-Adriatico, a race where he previously finished 2nd overall. To add insult to injury, members of the media are questioning if his flat at the end of stage 5 was legitimate, or if he was attempting to hide how much he was struggling to stay in the group. Whether it is true or not is irrelevant, the fact that we are even asking that question about a rider who was discussed as a possible winner of the near impossible Giro/Tour double mere months ago shows how far and quickly his star has fallen.

Now let’s take a look at three riders trending up coming off the first big block of serious racing.

Trending Up

Peter Sagan
The three-time world champion missed the standard early season tune-ups, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Kuurne–Brussels–Kuurne, where he usually announces himself and/or hones his form. However, if anyone thought that the birth of his first child and a late start to the European season would hamper his Classics campaign, they were proven wrong this week. Sagan looked strong but maybe missing the top gear at Strade Bianche last Saturday. While not at his best, he still managed to finish 8th at the absurdly hard race. And while he hasn’t won a stage at Tirreno this year, he has three 2nd place finishes, two to Marcel Kittel and one to Adam Yates. Kittell, a 190-pound monster, was created in a lab to be the fastest road cyclist in the world on a flat, straight finish, while Yates is a 125-pound climber who floats away on the steepest pitches. It is likely that these two riders have never even ridden next to each other in the group and possibly don’t even know the other exists. The fact that Sagan finished behind each on back-to-back days is a testament to his otherworldly versatility. Most importantly for Sagan, on stage 5 he showed a willingness to sit in the group and force other riders/teams to chase, even if it meant having his bluff called and the lone rider staying away. The Slovak is showing his competitors that the days of relying on him to chase back every move in the finale of the race are over. These tough lessons could pay major dividends at the upcoming Monuments, where patience is arguably more important than physical form.

If this impressive consistency still had us asking questions about his form going into Sanremo, the means in which he clawed himself back into the pack on stage 6 at Tirreno should leave no doubt. With 8km to go, Fernando Gaviria crashed directly in front of Sagan. For every other ride on the planet, this would have meant they were going down as well. However, Sagan reminded us that he isn’t every other rider. He somehow managed to hop over the fallen Colombian, stop, get a new bike from his team car, chase back on to the full-speed peloton, and still nearly beat Kittel in the sprint to the line. This highly impressive chase forced Sagan to tip his hand more than he would have liked, but it could end up being a mere teaser for a truly dominant Classics run from Sagan.

Tiesj Benoot
The young Belgian finally made good on his vast reserves of potential by winning Strade Bianche in highly impressive fashion. Benoot has been tipped so heavily as the star of the future, that it was shocking to learn his Strade victory was the first in his professional career. Certainly not a bad way to announce to arrival. However, the most impressive thing about Benoot isn’t his ability to win races, it’s his ability to compete for the win in almost every race on the calendar. In the age of specialists, it’s shocking to see a rider win a one-day classic and finish top-ten at three conservative climbing stages the following week. Benoot’s top ten finishes at the Tirreno-Adriatico summit finishes are arguably more impressive than his win at Strade. The only issue facing him at the moment is having to decide if he wants to be a stage racing specialist or a one-day Classics star. While leaving the one-days for the promise of Grand Tour success can be a gamble (see above: Geraint Thomas), Benoot’s lack of finishing punch could leave him an also-ran throughout his Classics career. He would be wise to consider taking his immense talents to the Tour de France in an attempt to become the first Belgian to win since  Lucien Van Impe in 1976. This is certainly a tall order that comes with substantial risk, but Benoot is the real deal with the talent to take on this challenge.

Michal Kwiatkowski
Kwiatkowski is one of the most underrated riders in the professional peloton. The former World Champion has an impressive palmares despite spending most of his career on crowded teams that don’t always let him race for the win. He is a rare rider that can regularly win one-day Classics (Milan-Sanremo, 2x Strade Bianche, E3 Harelbeke, Classica San Sebastian, Amstel Gold, World Road Race Championship) while climbing with the best in the high Alps of the Tour de France. He won Volta ao Algarve by taking the lead from his teammate Geraint Thomas on the final stage and wrestled team leadership away from Froome and Thomas at a stacked Tirreno-Adriatico. His usurping of teammate Geraint Thomas on the final stage of Algarve earlier this season signaled that he finally might be ready to shrug off the yoke of Team Sky domestiqueness (these crude images violate my number 1 rule: an on-form World Champion should never be relegated to set pace for teammates) and ride for himself. The looming suspension of his team leader Chris Froome has thrown the traditional rote hierarchy of Sky into disarray as the other riders sense that Froome either won’t be able to compete at the upcoming Grand Tour or won’t be on his best form due to the stress of his ongoing legal battle. This means that everyone is auditioning to be the new Alpha at every day of every race between now and the Tour. Kwiatkowski will most certainly show up ready to defend his Milan Sanremo title on Saturday. However, I wouldn’t be on him to take the victory, only because winning this race is hard, and winning it twice in a row is nearly impossible. But if he continues his impressive run of form, my money is on the young Pole to come out of the Sky scrum as their Tour de France leader. If that happens, the dynamic 2018 Tour route could play right into Kwiato’s hands and we could see the emergence of a new Grand Tour contender.