Few elite sportspeople are more laid back and easy-going than Geraint Thomas.
On the bike, though, it is a different story – as the Welshman’s success attests.
The 2018 Tour de France winner and double Olympic track cycling champion is set to retire at the end of this season – and we look back at how his career has unfolded.
Thomas began his full-time participation with the Barloworld team, alongside another of Sky’s future stars, Chris Froome. It was with Barloworld where Thomas contested his first Tour de France – road cycling’s biggest and toughest race. He finished 140th in the general classification. You’ve got to start (and finish) somewhere…
It all began – as it does for so many heroes of the road – on the track. Thomas was part of one of the first intakes of British Cycling’s Academy programme in 2004. He and others, including Mark Cavendish, benefited from improved training methods in Manchester’s Velodrome as well as the camaraderie of shared accommodation near the city centre. At the 2007 Track World Championships, Thomas was part of the team pursuit squad who won gold.
Worlds gold turned into Olympic gold in 2008, as Team GB swept all before them in Beijing. Thomas won the first of his two Olympic golds in the team pursuit – the other being in London four years later – alongside Paul Manning, Ed Clancy and, of course, Bradley Wiggins, whose story would soon converge with Thomas’ as he dreamed of hitting the Tarmac.
Thomas would not return to his beloved Tour de France until 2010. But he remained focused on his preferred discipline on the road: time trialling. On his day, Thomas was the best in the world in the race against the clock. His greatest TT result came on stage one of the 2017 Tour when he won to put himself in the coveted yellow jersey.
Thomas, along with Britain’s best talent, was signed up to a new project born from British Cycling’s success on the track – Team Sky. The team brought the most money and the most scientific approach the sport had ever seen, along with a number of new names who were set to change, and frustrate, a largely French and Belgian peloton reeling from the latest doping scandal to hit the sport.
Sky professed a newly clean approach to cycling, a sport which had not managed to escape the shadow of doping by 2010. Sir Dave Brailsford led a team which adopted the ‘marginal gains’ approach, in which team doctors and coaches extracted time savings from every single area of performance and preparation. The peloton had seen nothing like it.
The peloton had also never seen such racing discipline, with the team’s famous ‘Sky Train’ locking out most rivals as strong domestiques, including Thomas, used every last bit of energy during their turn at the front to help protect the team leader from the wind. It’s also where Thomas became known for his trademark white-rimmed sunglasses, marking him out from other riders.
Thomas had his fair share of crashes across his career, as most cyclists do. But many felt the 38-year-old was unluckier than most. He once came to grief during the 2020 Giro d’Italia after a discarded water bottle from another rider bounced off a wall, as the peloton passed through an ancient village on Sicily, and became wedged underneath Thomas’ front wheel causing him to sustain a broken pelvis in the ensuing crash.
But in 2018 it all came good for the former domestique from Cardiff. On his ninth Tour de France, after assisting Chris Froome to his four Tour wins (in 2013 and 2015-17), he finally out-performed his British team-mate to take the yellow jersey after winning stage 11.
Thomas remained in yellow all the way to Paris, much to the surprise of many in the sport. His win on stage 12’s iconic, winding ascent to Alpe d’Huez cemented his new status as a top rider. A realisation he shared with his wife Sa in the French capital.
Wales will always be close to Thomas’ heart. He has won four medals at three Commonwealth Games, and fronts the Watts Occurring podcast with fellow Welshman and former Ineos team-mate Luke Rowe.
As Team Sky morphed into Ineos Grenadiers, Thomas’ performances remained strong. He came within a whisker of victory at the Giro d’Italia in 2023, losing out to Slovenia’s Primoz Roglic by seconds on a final-stage mountain time trial. He also won the Tour de Romandie in 2021 and Tour de Suisse in 2022.
He would finish on the podium in Paris twice more (in 2019 and 2022). But it’s thanks to his victory in 2018 that Thomas will always be affiliated with the romance of the Tour; a rider perfectly reflecting the French underdog spirit, who found another level in the mountains.
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