A crash-marred but undisputedly successful classics season came to an end for Geraint Thomas, as the 27-year old Welshman lined up as one of a very few cobbled specialists at the Amstel Gold Race and, again, pulled out of the hectic Dutch event due to yet another unfortunate accident.

"I was moving up on the right and there was curb and someone in the bunch swerved right to go for a leak and I just had nowhere to go," Thomas told Cyclingnews as he waited for his teammates at the finish line in Valkenburg.

"That rider took me out and I had a sore arse, back and hip. I felt like I couldn't get much out, so it's not ideal and it's frustrating because I've had a few crashes now and to be honest most of them have been down to pure bad luck."

"That's easy to say but I was taking a drink in Flanders and someone slammed on the brakes, I hit the curb and flew over the bars. Maybe I could have waited until we were out of the town before I took a drink. I don't know."

Thomas has shown signs of an increasing disposition ahead of the Flemish classics when he achieved a rare chance to lead the Team Sky at the Paris-Nice and celebrated this opportunity in style, clad in the leader’s yellow jersey, before crashing out of the French event on its penultimate stage.

The 27-year old Welshman quickly returned to competition, but suffered badly in the difficult weather conditions at the Milano-Sanremo which not only forced him to abandon the race but to have his classics season to a delayed start, after Team Sky decided to rest their riders worn by a cold Italian rain.

Thomas bounced back with a bang however, claiming a podium spot in his Flemish opener – E3 Harelbeke, and adding two other top ten finished at the Ronde van Vlaanderen and Paris-Roubaix respectively, despite playing a supporting role to Edvald Boasson Hagen and Bradley Wiggins in the latter. Welshman’s cobbled classics campaign, however, wasn’t the uninterrupted success story, as good results obtained in some of the races were consequently interspersed with hitting a deck in another.

When accidents tend to happen that often, usually arguments about bike handling skills and lack of experience are brought into a discussion, but crashes are an integral part of the cobbled classics’ landscape and as a matter of a fact, most of those Thomas has been involved in were due to a pure bad luck.

Recalling several of the numerous accidents the 27-year old Welshman suffered in last two months, Team Sky wondered whether there was any chance to avoid the bad luck.

"It wasn't really a crash but there have been a few of those things and then everyone starts talking about it and it starts to get at you a bit," Thomas reflected on the Gent-Wavelgem crash which saw an abrupt end of Andre Greipel’s classics campaign.

"I can see that if you look at four crashes then people are going to think 'what's he doing?'. But when you break them down and look at what's happened you think maybe one could have been prevented, but not a lot could have been done, and especially today. I just got taken out."

The Sunday when Amstel Gold Race is held marks a turnover in peloton, with athletic cobbled specialists being replaced with lightweight explosive riders excelling on the Ardennes hilly courses. Even though some of the former usually line up at the start of the Dutch sole classic, they were surprisingly poorly represented this season, and there was a feeling of regret not to follow the majority in Thomas’ final assessment of his prematurely ended appearance in the event.

"It was mentally quite hard coming here. I wanted to race, I said at the start of the year that I wanted to be here because I've come out here and watched the race twice as a kid, but I feel like over those three weeks in Belgium I've slowly started to put a bit of weight on and felt a bit weird coming here. There are guys like Gerrans and Gilbert coming in and they're all ready and it just felt like I was a bit overdone. I still wanted to give it a good crack and help Swift and Boasson Hagen."

Leaving a busy spring season behind his back, Thomas was more than pleased to take a well-deserved break before launching his preparations for the another important goal of 2014, the Tour de France.

"Now I go to Bayern and to Tenerife around the 11th. I've got a nice break and some time to switch off from people telling me to move up because there's a dangerous section coming up and this and that," he said with a wry smile.

"It's good to switch off now for a couple of weeks, get that hunger back for the build up for the Tour de France."