Geraint Thomas has recovered from his disappointment at Paris-Nice to take to the start line for today’s Milan-Sanremo, the first race in the Classics period that the Welshman loves to race in.

He crashed on stage 7 and lost all hope of a podium when he was sitting second on GC. This was immensely frustrating for Thomas, who was on for his best ever GC result in a WorldTour race. 

“Coming into the race, I knew I was going OK, and being told the team were going to be riding for me gave me that added pressure to perform. I was grateful to be given that role, even though I didn’t know initially how I’d get on.

“I felt good during the opening three stages though, and taking the jersey and defending it for a few days was a massive boost to my confidence.”

“The crash was more frustrating than anything else because a week’s worth of hard work from the team was lost in less than a second. That was pretty hard to take at the time because I’d been happy with the way I’d been riding up to that point.”

Thomas recovered from the crash at his home in Monaco and is now hoping to be fit enough to play a key role in La Primavera.

“I can still feel my knee and my hip a little bit, so I’m definitely not 100%,” he added. “But I don’t think it’ll affect my performance too much."

“We haven’t spoken about specific tactics yet, but without Le Manie in the race, we’re expecting it to come down to a bunch sprint so Edvald [Boasson Hagen] will probably be our strongest rider. The route suits Ben [Swift]’s style as well, so he could have a free role and give us another card to play. It’s forecast rain for Sunday so that could make things more unpredictable, so we’ll just have to see."

“I’d love to do a strong ride myself, and Milan–San Remo marks the start of a major block of racing for me where I’ll be hoping to perform well in every race I enter."

“I feel like I’ve got the legs to do something in the next month or so, but these races are really unpredictable and you need everything to go well for you if you’re going to be in the mix.”

Thomas may not be able to win tomorrow’s race, but he will be relying on having a good ride to get the sense of racing back into his legs in order to prepare him for the rest of the Spring Classics.