Adam Blythe: Bad luck ‘just drowning’ Ineos Grenadiers’ Geraint Thomas after latest 2023 Vuelta a Espana mishap

Adam Blythe thinks that Ineos Grenadiers’ Geraint Thomas is suffering from a “heck of a wave” of “bad luck” at this year’s Vuelta a Espana.

Thomas came to Spain as one of the leaders for the British side, but after 10 stages and a string of problems for Ineos, the Welshman is more than 13 minutes off the pace, in 21st in the general classification.

Speaking to Eurosport, Blythe said: “I think the whole team, with Laurens De Plus crashing on the first stage in the first two kilometres of racing, then we had [Thymen] Arensman go down – that seems like ages ago now – the luck’s not been on their side at all, they’ve not had a good run of it.

“Geraint Thomas, bad fall before it, and then this moment here. We understand that his chain got jammed and he couldn’t pedal.

“He had to change his bike, and I just feel sorry for G. His bad luck is coming in one heck of a wave, and it’s all just drowning him at the minute.

“He’s [doing] so much: keep riding, keeping pushing on, keep trying to give his best. And everything he does at the minute, seems to be everyday, something goes wrong.

“Losing time, there’s a crash, something mechanical. There’s always something. Hopefully, fingers crossed for G, it’s the last time something happens.”

Dan Lloyd wondered if, “he’s trying to get all his bad luck out of his way in his career, so afterwards he doesn’t have any again!”

Thomas was stoic when he looked back at his continued misfortune.

“You’ve just got to laugh, really, haven’t you?” he said after the stage was over.

“I thought I’d treat it like I was going full from the start of this morning. I attacked out of the start because I thought even if I sit up halfway round I think it will still do me good for tomorrow, because if I don’t do much I block up and I can feel terrible. So a good hit-out was what I wanted anyway.”

He instead decided to use the rest of the course as an opportunity to sharpen up for the week ahead.

He continued: “I actually felt okay. I was kind of doing the numbers that were on the plan, but then the chain got stuck between the 11 and the frame so I had to change bikes. And then I was just like ‘ah, I’ll still push a bit’ but just switched off a bit then and rode it in and treated it as a nice little warm-up for the rest of the week.

“As a team we’ve just got to start every day like it’s a one-day [race] really,” Thomas said. “Try and make the moves because you never know, a breakaway might go, but at the same time it might be a GC day as well. But I think we just need to race it, race every day as best we can and keep believing in ourselves.

“It has been hard, to be honest, because a lot of things have gone wrong but that’s the way it goes sometimes. We’ve just got to keep our heads up and keep trying, that’s all we can do.”