Tour of Catalonia 2016: Geraint Thomas knows Nice win will open up road for Tour de France bid

Welsh rider tells Alasdair Fotheringham in Spain that ‘surreal’ victory bodes well for the summer

Winning Paris-Nice has increased Geraint Thomas’ (centre) standing with Team Sky (Getty)

It has been quite an eventful six months for Geraint Thomas: since September he has got married, started a new business in Wales and, earlier this month, made a statement of intent for his career with victory in the Paris-Nice race.

As Britain’s third winner in France’s second hardest stage race, Thomas is following in the wheeltracks of two giants of the sport, Tom Simpson, who won it in 1967 and Sir Bradley Wiggins (2012).

But whereas when the Yorkshireman and the Londoner captured Paris-Nice it instantly raised their status as Tour de France candidates the same summer, for Thomas, the victory – double Tour de France winner Alberto Contador and former Sky team-mate Richie Porte were second and third respectively – is a strong statement of intent for a little further down the line.

“It’s massive, especially to have beaten the people I did,” Thomas tells The Independent. “It’s surreal, it hasn’t sunk in yet that my name will be up there in a race I used to run home from school to watch at the end of each day.

“Coming into this block of racing, I was looking at taking as many chances as I could, obviously, but winning Paris-Nice was the main one for me, the one I really wanted to do well in out of all of them. But it doesn’t feel like this progression has happened in the last year or two, I’ve been building for it in the last part of my career: now it’s more about extending that learning curve.”

Given its prestige, though, Paris-Nice has highlighted Thomas’s imminent role this July as a protected rider for Sky at the Tour de France. It means for the first time he will be racing from the off as the team’s Plan B behind double winner and team-mate Chris Froome. This scenario differs radically from last year’s Tour when after a first week of working hard for Froome and risking sacrificing his own chances, Thomas was only promoted to Plan B more than a third of the way towards Paris.

The Cardiff-born rider – who has just entered the business world with plans to use his Grade II-listed Victorian house near Chepstow as a wedding venue – will be, like Froome and all the other top contenders, staying out of the firing line until the crucial stages begin. “The aim is to be there in the best shape possible, be that solid back-up for Froomey. If anything did happen to him, I’d love to take that chance, the main thing is being in the shape to take it,” he says.

“It’s about racing smartly. Last year every day I was just doing what had to be done [to support Froome]. I wasn’t even questioning it. This year I want to do less in the first week to have more in the tank for the last one.”

While Thomas will be looking to improve on his 15th place from last year, does this mean that in future Tours he would like to be challenging for the title himself? “Yeah, I’d love to, that’d be the dream. Hopefully, if I keep going the way I am I’ll be in a position to do that, but I have to wait and see.”

Even if his Tour aspirations will hinge on, ultimately, another rider’s performance this summer, Thomas is still targeting some prestigious race victories in his own right between now and July. There is the Tour de Suisse, for example, the nine-day stage race considered cycling’s fourth Grand Tour, in which he finished a close second last year.

But his considerably heightened focus on stage racing means sacrifices, too, like all but giving up on his one-day racing programme this spring. On Friday, rather than racing in the E3 Harelbeke, a top Belgian Classic which Thomas won last year, he is riding here in Spain in the Tour of Catalonia. Instead of his usual full programme of northern Classics, he will only be racing in one, the Tour of Flanders.

“I’ll miss them,” he says. “The fact that I’m racing here and won’t have time to watch them will help. If I was just sat at home watching them, for sure it’d be a 100 times worse,” Thomas reflects.

Rather than the Classics, this week’s stint in Catalonia has a distinct echo of the Tour de France, too, given the line-up of top stage racers present, including double Tour runner-up Nairo Quintana and Contador. For Sky, Froome is the leader for Catalonia and Thomas is, as he puts it, “another card to play”.

The question further down the line is whether, given Froome’s dominance, Thomas – whose contract runs out at the end of the season – is happy to play understudy or might leave Sky to have his own chance elsewhere. For now, Thomas says he is “getting stuck in on racing” rather than thinking too much about his options for 2017. But for British fans, the prospect of another home Tour de France challenger, however distant, can only be welcome – and each new success for Thomas can only make that more likely.

Martin snatches race lead in Catalonia

Birmingham-born Irishman Dan Martin has won stage three of the Tour of Catalonia to seize the race lead.

The 29-year-old finished the 172km stage from Girona to the summit at La Molina ahead of a stellar field, with Tinkoff’s Alberto Contador second and Romain Bardet of Ag2r La Mondiale third.

Chris Froome was eighth, one place ahead of fellow Briton, Hugh Carthy, who races for Caja Rural-Seguros.

Martin holds a 6sec overall lead from Contador, while Froome sits 22sec behind in seventh and his Sky colleague Geraint Thomas is ninth in the race, which finishes on Sunday.