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When Geraint Thomas and Chris Froome were left out of Ineos Grenadiers’ eight-man squad for the recent Tour de France, it felt like the end of an era. After 10 years of unprecedented British success on the sport’s biggest stage, Ineos’s decision to head to France with a Colombian as their leader, and an Ecuadorean as Plan B, seemed to herald a new direction for the British superteam. And the end of the good times for British cycling. Sure, there were some promising young riders coming through - at Ineos and elsewhere - but the days of Mark Cavendish winning four or five Tour stages every summer, or British riders picking up grand tour wins for fun, seemed like a distant dream. Or maybe not. The 2020 Giro d’Italia begins in Sicily on Saturday with two British riders, Thomas and Simon Yates of Mitchelton-Scott, firmly installed as the top two favourites with the bookmakers. That is not to say they will win. But they have as good a chance as anyone else in the field. Yates and Thomas finished first and second respectively in the main build-up race, Tirreno-Adriatico, last month, and both start the Giro with points to prove. Thomas is desperate to prove that he still has it - to himself, to Ineos after that controversial Tour selection, to anyone who doubted him when they saw him labouring up the climbs at the Criterium du Dauphine in August. At 34, the Welshman is not getting any younger. He is a father now, as he reminded us on Friday when he said he was sorry to be missing his son Macs’ first birthday. But he is not done yet. Thomas has, in his own words, “unfinished business” with the Giro after his last experience of the race in 2017. In his his first grand tour as a leader, Thomas began that race well and was in second place overall when, on stage nine, a bizarre crash involving Sunweb’s Wilco Kelderman and a police motorbike, caused a chain reaction which sent Thomas and others in the peloton flying.
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