Geraint Thomas and Luke Rowe on 'gut-wrenching' Tao Geoghegan Hart exit from Giro d’Italia following crash

Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) was left ruing a “big loss” at the Giro d’Italia after team-mate Tao Geoghegan Hart left the race in an ambulance, while regular Ineos road captain Luke Rowe called it “gut-wrenching” on The Breakaway. Thomas and Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma) also went down in the crash with 68km remaining on Stage 11 when Alessandro Covi (UAE Team Emirates) slid out on a wet turn and took a number of riders with him. Although Thomas and Roglic resumed, Geoghegan Hart was not so fortunate and was placed on a stretcher.

Ad A third Ineos rider, Pavel Sivakov, was also wounded in the crash and came across the finish line almost 14 minutes down on winner Pascal Ackermann (Bora-hansgrohe). Giro d'ItaliaGeoghegan Hart 'devastated' after crashing out of Giro18 MINUTES AGO Thomas opened up about the crash to Eurosport after coming home in the main bunch to keep the maglia rosa. The Welshman leads Roglic by two seconds on GC.

“A UAE guy [Covi] was next to me and he went down first. Luckily for me, I just landed on him,” Thomas said. “And then behind it was chaos and obviously Tao was badly hurt.

Pavel also knocked himself about a bit and I saw Roglic at the finish and he had quite a fleshy cut on his hip. Hopefully they are all OK. On Tao’s exit, he continued: “It’s a big loss for us.

We tried to focus straight away… as you saw at the end, there was another big crash and I was lucky to avoid that. “It’s certainly a blow to lose Tao. It obviously changes our tactics slightly when it comes to the big mountain days, but we’ll cross that bridge when it comes to it.