Cycling: Yates picks Thomas as Giro favourite

Simon Yates believes Geraint Thomas is the clear favourite to take out this year's Giro d'Italia. Yates: "The most meaningful [achievement] for me was when "I think you look at the way [Geraint Thomas] rode in the World Championships, he's going to be there or thereabouts I think. The other guys are also very strong in time trials, Vincenzo Nibali, Jakob Fuglsang. These are the guys I think Rafał Majka is a class rider as well. But I think none of those guys are in the same class as Geraint in the time trials. So I think he's the guy that's really - a lot of guys are going to shape their race around this guy. It's going to be difficult, you saw in the World Championships and in the time trial there he was very good. So it's going to be interesting." qualified for the Ivory Coast's first World Cup in 2005 on the road to Germany 2006. My team-mates and I managed to send out a message after this qualification, a message to the politicians to put the guns down, to sit down at the table and speak. We used football as a platform to promote peace and togetherness. I'm really happy with this because we contributed in a way to the ceasefire."