Former Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas has said he has a hard time seeing how multiple runner-up and double outright champion Jonas Vingegaard can find his best condition in the third week of this year’s race.
The Netcompany Ineos director of racing, who retired at the end of 2025, pointed to the very hard first week of the Tour, with its double incursion into the Pyrenees, as one factor that could cause the Visma-Lease a Bike rider to fail to find late form.
After winning the opening TTT and leading for two days, Vingegaard is currently lying second, 4:30 back, after 14 stages, and has multiple riders snapping at his heels on GC, Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) being the closest at 34 seconds behind, and another four are at less than 90 seconds back.
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Visma-Lease a Bike have repeatedly said that Vingegaard is always best in the final week of racing of a Grand Tour and are hoping that the double Tour winner will turn things around when the end is almost within sight.
But, speaking before stage 14 where Vingegaard was his strongest yet in the race but still was left reeling when Pogačar attacked on the Col du Haag, Thomas believes it will be complicated.
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“They know him better in his team but I struggle to see how that happens to be honest. I know he was in control in the Giro, but the Tour is the Tour, the start of this race has been so hard,” Thomas – third in the 2022 Tour de France behind Pogačar and the Danish rider – told reporters.
“Maybe he will come good, we’ll see, time will tell, but for me, it’s tough to improve.”
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“But they [Visma] know him a lot better than me. For our boys, it’s just about trying to be on the front foot and seeing how we can go.”
Like Vingegaard, Netcompany Ineos have three riders in the Tour de France who completed the 2026 Giro – Egan Bernal, Thymen Arensman, fourth overall in Italy, and Filippo Ganna. Their goals are mainly stage wins, although Bernal, who had expected to race the Vuelta a España until teammate Oscar Onley was badly injured in the Tour Auvergne-Rhòne-Alpes, is currently doing the best on GC in eleventh.
“Egan’s been riding well, Thymen has been suffering a bit, but I think we need to look at what he did last year. He did the Giro and then he came here and won two days at the back end of the race,” Thomas pointed out.
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“We just need to stick to the process, keep doing the right things and stay positive, and we’ll see.”
Egan Bernal (Netcompany Ineos) among the riders climbing through the throng of fans on stage 14 (Image credit: Getty Images)
Thomas said that personally he always found the combination of two Grand Tours in a single year – something he did four times in his lengthy career, in 2015, 2017, 2023 and 2024 – was never an easy ask. However, he argued that both Bernal and Arensman were “more natural GC guys”.
“It is tough, especially when the Tour is the second of the two Grand Tours because it’s the hardest. We’ll see in the next week, that’s where the Tour starts, you could say. There are some really tough GC stages coming up now.”
“I did the Giro-Tour once [in 2024, although he was also a DNF in both in 2017 – Ed.] and it wasn’t pretty. I didn’t necessarily enjoy the Tour after that, but I was in a different stage of my career. I was 38 and third in the Giro [in 2024] took it out of me, by the Tour I was just out.”
For me, it’s as much the mental side as the physical, and so as long as the boys are up for it, can go deep and suffer, then we’ll see.”
Of the Ineos riders who rode the Giro, Bernal’s performance is perhaps the most surprising, given his switch into the Tour team was so unexpected. According to Thomas, looking at how well the 2019 Tour winner finished the Giro, there was always a good chance he’d come around in July. That said, to be fighting for a top ten finish was a pleasant surprise.
“Who knows?” Thomas told Cyclingnews. “With everything that happened to Oscar, it felt like Egan’s experience and leadership was key to the group to come here. The fact that he finished the Giro in no pain and feeling strong, that was the main reason [for taking him to the Tour]. As for the first two weeks here – he’s done pretty well.”
Thomas is not putting a number on where they want to see Bernal, who is currently eleventh at 15:55 on race leader Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG). Rather, there are other priorities.
“He has been pain-free for the majority of the year, and that’s the most important thing, it’s sounds like a bit of a cop-out, but it’s about giving everything he can every day and where he ends up is where he ends up.”
“After the Giro” – where Bernal finished tenth – “and coming here, it’d be a bit unfair to say to him ‘look, you’ve got to be top ten’ or whatever.
“But we’ll see how the race goes. He’s a fighter, he loves racing, gets stuck in, and that’s all you can ask for.”
Filippo Ganna during the stage 1 team time trial (Image credit: Getty Images)
The third member of Netcompany’s 2026 Giro-Tour group is Filippo Ganna, already a stage winner in his home Grand Tour this May and in sterling form during the Tour’s team time trial as well. A natural objective for a time trial specialist like the former world time trial champion is the 26.1 km stage 16 race against the clock on Tuesday, although the inclusion of a Cat. 2 climb, the Côte de Larringes early on, could make for a rather atypical route.
“It’ll be tough with that climb, a few of the numbers guys [amongst the team’s trainers] are to me, slightly cautious,” Thomas, who won the opening prologue of the Tour in 2017, said of Ganna’s chances.
“But as I see it, we didn’t expect him to be as strong as he was on the first day, or on stage 9, where we didn’t expect him to be as good as he felt in the last 50ks,” where Ganna was in the break with stage winner Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech).
“You’ve got be in it to win it, anything can happen to Remco or Pog’. We’ll see how the next couple of days go, and take it from there.”
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