Geraint Thomas has seen almost everything there is to see in pro cycling.

Thomas said this as he reached the summit of Oropa at the end of the second stage of the Giro d'Italia.

Despite suffering a puncture at the base, Pogachar took his eighth win of the season and moved into the Maria Rosa with a 45-second overall lead already. Thomas finished third, 27 seconds behind Pogachar, and second in the overall standings, also 45 seconds behind Pogachar.

When Mickey Mantle struck out Sandy Koufax repeatedly in the 1963 World Series, he could not hide his frustration at his opponent's otherworldly pitching. He said, "How am I supposed to hit those damn pitches?" which became a quote that will go down in major league history.

Thomas, by contrast, was rather composed in the face of Pogachar's unhittable fastball, displaying the same restraint he showed at the 2022 Tour de France and last year's Giro.

When Pogachar made his game-deciding acceleration with 4.4 km to go, Tomas immediately understood that the Slovenian was playing a very different game than the rest of the field and avoided trying to swing for the fences against it. [and after steering Ben O'Connor (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), he was content to follow the Australian and shake off his calls for help.

"I wanted to keep up, but I knew if I tried to go that way I would blow up," Thomas said of Pogachar's initial acceleration.

"I felt bad sitting on top of Ben, but I was on the limit for a while there and had to recover. The pack got closer and I tried to recover some seconds in the sprint for second place."

Pogachar, as usual, was in a category all his own in the upper reaches of the Oropa. The struggle behind him, on the other hand, was a tale of two different approaches. While Thomas and Daniel Martinez (Bora Hansgrohe) accepted the need to follow at a distance, O'Connor paid the price of trying to stick close to the Slovenian and lost a minute to the summit.

"I'm not sure what happened to him," Thomas said of O'Connor. "I feel bad that I didn't pull him, but I was like, 'I'm at my limit.' But I was like, "I'm at my limit.""

Tomás was ahead of his former teammate Martinez in the seven-man sprint for second place, although he had already earned a two-second bonus second in the intermediate sprint at the base, and his Ineos team was also defending an overnight lead over Honatan Narváez, also to avoid the risks involved in passing through Viera.

In fact, Tomas did not know that Pogachar had a flat tire at the bottom of the final climb and fell off the bike until he was informed over the radio that the UAE Team Emirates rider had returned to the peloton.

"To be honest, I didn't know until we started the climb and they said, 'Tadej is back,'" Thomas said. 'I had no idea because the radio was terrible. I wasn't going to attack, but I knew it was going to be chaos back there, so I was going to play it safe at the front."

Despite the surprise of Thomas' teammate Narvaez finishing ahead of Pogachar in Turin on Saturday, the opening weekend of the Giro went largely as expected.

As expected, Pogachar put down a marker in Oropa and built an early lead, but Thomas, who has had a modest season so far, is back in contention for a podium finish, 12 months after coming within 14 seconds of becoming the oldest winner in Giro history.

"I didn't feel as good as yesterday," Thomas said. Yesterday I felt like I had more punch, but on the second day I felt okay. But Tadej is Tadej, so ......."

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