After placing runner-up at the Giro d'Italia, Geraint Thomas has outlined his plans for the rest of the 2023 season, targeting the British national championships and the World Championships ahead of a possible tilt at the Vuelta a España.
Thomas rounded out his Giro on Sunday after losing the pink jersey to Primoz Roglic in the penultimate-day time trial, but came from a disrupted start to the season to claim the fourth Grand Tour podium of his career after filling each step of the Tour de France podium.
The Vuelta, then, is where Thomas has the most unfinished business, having only raced there once in 2015 after helping Chris Froome win the Tour.
After the Giro, he described the Vuelta as a 'possibility', but the next engagements are more certain, with nationals at the end of June and then the 'Super Worlds' in Scotland at the start of August, where he's eyeing the time trial.
"I'm with the family for a week now. I'll do a coffee ride, one or two, just to turn the legs over, but this week pretty much shut it down, then get going again," Thomas said on his Watts Occurring podcast.
"Nationals will be my next race and I'm looking forward to that. Worlds will be the next target. Being in the UK, it's a big one, isn't it, so maybe target the TT there. Then possibly the Vuelta as well, but we'll see about that."
Thomas had already made a stronger hint about the Vuelta in the immediate aftermath of the Giro.
“I’m not going to commit to anything just yet, but I’ve already done the Vuelta once and it wasn’t a good experience, so it would be nice to go and have a better one,” he said.
The 2023 British Road Championships take place from June 21-25 in Redcar and Cleveland in the northeast of England. The event opens with the time trials on Wednesday, with a flat and fast 41.1km course for the men that takes riders around the Croft motor racing circuit.
The road races follow on the Sunday, with the elite men covering 10 laps of the 18.9km circuit which starts and finishes in Saltburn-by-the-Sea and packs in a number of punchy climbs.
The 2023 Road World Championships take place early this year, in a summer slot together with track and mountain bike in a multi-discipline Worlds. The elite men's road race takes place on the opening Sunday rather than the usual closing Sunday, while the time trial that Thomas will target takes place on Friday August 11. The course is 47.8km long, starting and finishing in Stirling, heading out into the rolling countryside on wide roads before heading back for a late cobbled kick-up to Stirling Castle.
2023 might have been the final season of Thomas' career but the Welshman, who turned 37 last week, appears to have warmed to the idea of continuing into 2024, and possibly even 2025, with contract negotiations another matter high on his post-Giro agenda.
