Benjamin Thomas: "2 kilometres is still a long way"

June 12 ^th 2025 - 17:43

"A small breakaway got away. We quickly realised that the sprinter teams wanted to control the race, the gap went down to around 50 seconds… I caught them by surprise to counter-attack and I got back to the front with Thibault Guernalec. We then tried to manage the situation on some tough roads. We tried to hold off the peloton on the climbs and make up time on the descents... We came a little short with the headwind in the final kilometres. I think that prevented us from going all the way. There were three or four teams riding, we had a good day and we'll try again.

I'm using my experience on days like this. You have to play with the peloton, take advantage of the different interests. Lidl-Trek didn't want to get too close to avoid counterattacks, other teams wanted to push hard to hurt Milan... There's a rivalry developing and we try to step on the gas when there’s an opening. At one point, it was down to a minute and we were able to make up 30-40 seconds on a descent. We're playing a game. But in the end, it's still up to the peloton. Two kilometres is still a long way. We needed another twenty seconds or so."