San Francisco Frontiers - Thomas targets yellow in Tour team time-trial

Now the British team's sporting director, Thomas is no stranger to time-trial success at the Tour.

In 2017, he won the opening individual time-trial ahead of his team leader Chris Froome and wore the yellow jersey for four days.

The following year, he went on to win the Tour.

Netcompany Ineos have included several strong time-trialists in their eight-man team for the Tour, which begins in Barcelona.

Italian Filippo Ganna is a twice former time-trial world champion having succeeded Norwegian Tobias Foss, while Briton Josh Tarling is a former European champion in the discipline.

Asked at a press conference if he was aiming to win the opening 19.6km team time-trial, Thomas said: "I'd be lying if I said it wasn't."

With their overall contender Oscar Onley, who was fourth last year, forced to miss the Tour through injury, the team will be hunting stage victories more than anything else.

And none more so than the opening one.

He said that the team had been practising throughout the year with the Tour TTT in mind.

"It's like anything, you're not going to win the mountain jersey without going up a hill," he said.

"But it's just a great opportunity for us, why not just give it a good shot? The boys are motivated for it.

"We've got some world-class time trialists... we've got two of the best individually and in the team discipline.

"It's just an exciting goal. Let's get out there, start with a bang and give it the best we can."

- New format -

At the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes a month ago, the team finished just nine seconds behind Visma-Lease a Bike in a 28.4km team time-trial in which they lost significant time when Onley's chain dropped and the others had to slow down and wait for him to fix it before continuing their charge.

They will come into this weekend's race as one of the big favourites to take the first yellow jersey.

The new team time-trial format, which ends with a punchy climb, requires classic time-trialists to deliver a more explosive climber to finish off their effort.

In many teams case that will be their overall contender.

Each team's time is taken when their first rider crosses the line.

"Obviously there's been a lot of thought and a lot of discussion about the best strategy," said Thomas.

"You need a finisher that's able to go up that last climb quickly after the last 20 odd minutes.

"I don't think now is the time to discuss our strategy, but it's something we've put a lot of effort into."

The final climb is less than a kilometre long and not massively steep, but tough enough that larger, heavier specialist sprinters or time-trialists would be unable to keep pace with a lighter punchy climber.

S.Hall--SFF