Naples has been a tourist magnet for 2,500 years. Most of the time, the eye is drawn to the dramatic view of the bay, with Vesuvius glimmering in the distance. For Geraint Thomas on stage 9 of the Giro d'Italia, the gaze turned to the bumps in the road beneath his wheels.

A visit to the Giro d'Italia meant that the southwest end of the city would be free of its notorious traffic jams for the afternoon, only to be replaced by another rolling chaos. On the undulating old roadway up and down the city of Pozzuoli, 162 cyclists jostled for position in place of the usual crowd of scooters and cabs.

Thomas, who had already fallen off the bike with 58 km to go, admitted after the race that it was no such hassle. Thomas, from Wales, finished in the main group and remained in third place overall, 2:58 behind Tadei Pogachar, but as he warmed down by the Ineos bus on Caracciolo Street, he was thinking more about the conditions than his position.

"I was bouncing all over the place. Everyone is talking about safety now, but it's definitely not safe," Thomas said. It's like a circus clown."

Complaints about Naples' road infrastructure are not new, of course, and are not limited to the propeloton, which has visited the city three times in a row for the Giro. In Nicolas Pugliese's classic novel Malacqua, the sinkholes that formed in the streets in the 1970s are an important motif. Thomas also acknowledges that the members of the Giro Gruppo are partly responsible for the tension in the finale.

"Obviously, the chains were jumping all over the place. 'It's pretty scary when you've got riders frantically bouncing around underneath you and there's big holes all over the place. Honestly, I'm glad I made it through that stage."

"The last couple of descents were just a total mess with holes in the road. We couldn't do anything about it ourselves. We tried to space ourselves out a little bit so we could see the holes for safety. But as soon as we opened the gap, there were idiots trying to jump into the gap. It was just a big mess."

Thomas' anxiety in the finale was perhaps amplified by his own crash earlier in the stage. When Max Schachmann (Bora-Hansgrohe) crashed in front of him, Thomas explained that he was unable to avoid the crash, but quickly rejoined the peloton, swapping bikes at the pace of Ben Swift, Connie Swift, and Tobias Foss.

"I hadn't crashed this year, so I had to crash once," Thomas said. 'After I crashed I switched bikes and went after it again.'

"The final was a big mess. But the riders supported me well, as they have all week.

Aside from a poor time trial in Perugia, Thomas has been strong throughout this Giro, holding off Ross in Oropa, chasing Pogachar in Fossano, and finishing just ahead of Maglia Rosa in Prati di Tivo on Saturday. Thomas has steadied himself over the last 49 hours since losing the race against the clock, but of course he knows that Pogachar is moving on a different level than all his opponents in this Giro.

Ineos is counting on Thomas' endurance to level the playing field a bit in week three, even if he has to rely on Pogachar's collapse. Dario Cioni told RAI this weekend, "In order to lose, Pogachar has to have a bad day, a really bad day."

Meanwhile, as the Giro enters its first rest day on Monday, Thomas admitted that he is simply happy to put the Napoli story in the past. Honestly, I'm just happy to be out of this peloton, away from everybody," he said. ." he said.