Having unexpectedly given Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) the slip on the final climb of stage 8 at Giro d'Italia, it was somewhat unusual to see the Ineos Greandiers riders, Tao Geoghegan Hart and Geraint Thomas, not trying to maximise their advantage.
They got across to Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) across the top of the Cappuccini climb, with 2.7km to go to the finish in Fossombrone. But rather than immediately working with the Slovenian, and pull as much time as possible out of Evenepoel, the two team mates sat behind Roglič as he pushed on.
At the finish - after gaining 14 seconds on Evenepoel but, more importantly, striking a big psychological blow against him - Thomas explained what had happened, saying the terrain didn't lend itself to swapping up and overs with Roglič.
"At the bottom (of Cappuccini) Roglič accelerated, it wasn't crazy, but he went a lot harder than I really wanted, so I tried to ride at my pace," Thomas said. "I stayed with Remco, and then with a K to go Remco tried to close (the gap) and squeezed and I just kept going, let him go.
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"I looked behind at (Eddie) Dunbar and (João) Almeida, people like that. I let them do a bit, biding my time. And Tao was just thinking exactly the same as me basically and we both accelerated the last, I dunno, 400 metres or so. He closed to Roglič, I was 10 metres off. Then Roglič went over the top, and I knew I just had to close it there and I did. And the three of us came to the finish.
"But it was hard to give him (Roglič) a turn because there was so many corners on the descent, and you didn't want to be dive bombing him and taking us all out. So then we came through at the end. It was a good day because early on, the first time when we went up that climb, when De Plus was riding (on the front) I didn't feel great. But I'm always like that now, kind of a slow engine to get going these days."
For his part, Geoghegan Hart made no reference to leaving the lion's share of the work to Roglič. The British rider, and Giro champion from two years ago, perhaps was the only one who looked as strong as Roglič on the final climb today. He closed to him very quickly when he made his move near the top and he is definitely one of about three or four riders capable of winning this race.
"We said in the (pre-stage) meeting that we want to try to take time on anyone we can, but also stay safe and ride our race. And we did all of those, so it was really good I think," Geoghegan Hart said. "It's very hard to make plans for this race because there's two big favourites but then a lot of teams on a similar level.
"And we have a really strong team but it's not always easy to use it. A lot of people have ideas but we just have to do our race. Sometimes be patient and sometimes go, like we did today. So we keep doing that in the next days."
