“The main reason for carrying on is that I’m still enjoying it,” Geraint Thomas says as, at the age of 37, he considers the new two-year contract he has just signed with his struggling team Ineos Grenadiers. Thomas won the Tour de France in 2018 and, this year, he narrowly missed winning the Giro d’Italia when he finished second after leading the race until an agonising time trial on the penultimate day.
Thomas now plans a further big tilt at a grand tour as well as chasing another medal in his fifth Olympic Games in Paris next summer. “Why not?” he says cheerfully. “I’m still riding well.”
These are giant ambitions for the amiable cyclist from Cardiff who still relishes the carefree life he embraced at the start of his career, when the partying could be as hard as the riding, and feels renewed pride that he has raced against era‑defining champions from Alberto Contador to Tadej Pogacar.
Thomas joined Team Sky, as Ineos used to be known, in 2010. His rise to prominence on the road coincided with the iron grip that Team Sky exerted over cycling for so long. Ineos are a more fitful outfit now, and only lead in terms of their vast budget which is bankrolled by the owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who is ready to pay £1.3bn to buy a 25% share of Manchester United. Thomas’s team languish behind Jumbo-Visma, cycling’s current dominant force, but his appetite for a gruelling life on the bike remains clear.
Ineos are finding it difficult to regain any momentum but Thomas’s own form when it matters is still considerable. He has finished on the podium “in four out of my last six [completed grand tour races]” and “so I still feel I’ve got it” Thomas says when asked if he is likely to target the Giro again next year. “Looking at the [2024] Giro course there are two long TTs, a gravel day and a hard last week as always. So it’s definitely an option. Obviously the Olympics will be a big hit as well for myself. I’d love to go there and make it to five Olympics which is mad.”
It helps that his family is settled in Monaco where they have lived and he has trained for years. “My wife [Sara] is fully up for it and our son [Macs who turned four this month] is super-happy here,” Thomas says. “He’s got his friends, his life here is great with good weather and being outside such a lot. The hardest bit for me is time away. But, in the grand scheme of things, it’s two more years and then I’ve got the rest of my life to be at home. So we decided to keep going.”
Thomas is in a good mood on a late afternoon in Monaco as he also chats engagingly about his favourite bike rides in his new book. Great Rides According to G describes some of the best places in the world to ride a bike, from routes in South Africa and New Zealand to Italy and Spain, while he adds evocative memories from his career. But, soon, Thomas will shut down the pleasures of off-season and hunker down to the grind of training and dieting.
He has to drop from a winter weight of 75kg to a gaunt 68kg and he grimaces at the prospect. “Physically, that’s by far the hardest part for me. When I get there I can go 100% for eight months. But you also have to step away from that intensity and relax a little. That’s just the way I am and it means I’ll have one big hit a year.”
Thomas tried to follow his huge effort at the Giro in May by aiming for the podium at the Vuelta a España which finished in September. It was too much and Thomas will now be more concentrated in one grand tour next year. At the Giro, he led by 26 seconds after the 19th of 21 stages. He was on the verge of the most impressive victory of his outstanding career but, in the 18.6km time trial, he simply ran out of puff while Primoz Roglic produced a stunning ride. Thomas lost the race by 14 seconds but, five months on, pride has replaced disappointment.
“Yes, because of the way we took the race on and we weren’t scared. It was amazing, and the team we had was really good, on and off the bike. Fourteen seconds after three weeks of racing is like nothing.”
The rest of the year produced meagre success for Ineos and showed how far they have fallen from the heights of winning the Tour de France seven times in eight years between 2012 and 2019. Pogacar, of UAE Team Emirates, and Jumbo’s Jonas Vingegaard have won the last four Tours between them. Jumbo, for whom Roglic and the Vuelta winner Sepp Kuss also ride, are way ahead but why have Ineos failed to challenge them in any meaningful way?
“I don’t really think anybody else has,” Thomas suggests. “Pogacar is so good that if he was with any other team he’d still be doing what he does. UAE are lucky to have him and I don’t think they’ve particularly gone past us. Fran Miller [Ineos’ former CEO] left. Rod Ellingworth [the team director who effectively runs Ineos on the road] left for a year. Dave Brailsford [the team principal] had his health issues, Egan Bernal [who won the 2019 Tour] had his massive crash [in 2022]. We’d also changed sponsor so we certainly went through a phase of transition and we’re starting to come out of that. We definitely went down a little and we’ve got a super-young team now. You can’t just perform straight away.
“But look what [19-year-old] Josh Tarling did in the World Time Trial [when he finished third] and, recently, beating Remco Evenepoel and winning the Euros. So he has a massive future and he’s going to get a hell of a lot better. It’s still tough when you’ve got young riders but this year we were the closest team to Jumbo [at the Giro]. The rest were minutes back. We’re all super-keen to get back up to the top because we’ve been there and we know what it’s like. It hurts to not be winning but we’re confident we can close that gap.”
Will Ratcliffe’s determination to become a minority owner of Manchester United add to the complications? “I don’t think so. Jim loves riding his bike and he loves his football. Obviously United is his childhood club and big dream. We get a lot of money as a cycling team but in the grand scheme for Ineos as a company it’s not a huge amount – especially compared to a football club. Jim will have a lot more going on, but he has a lot going on anyway. So I think it will be great and my family are already tapping me up to see if they can get Man U tickets if Ineos get involved.”
Thomas, meanwhile, is incredulous that Jumbo are battling uncertainty amid recent speculation that they might merge with Soudal-Quickstep. That won’t happen now but, as Thomas says, “It’s crazy that the team which has dominated cycling are struggling to get a sponsor. It’s sad for cycling, more than anything else.”
Vingegaard, Pogacar and Evenepoel represent the exhilarating new guard. Thomas admires all three but argues that “Froomy [his former teammate Chris Froome who won the Tour de France four times] was also a special guy. But Pogacar is one-of-a-kind. I think he’s the best of them all because he’s so diverse. He can do it all from one-day racing to the grand tours. All three are outstanding and it’s a privilege to be racing with them and competing against them to an extent.”
Thomas laughs ruefully as he knows age is against him now. “In one of my first pro races I was riding with Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich but back then I was a junior. But then you could enjoy life as well. It wasn’t as intense. I went on to race Fabian Cancellara in the Classics and Contador and [Vincenzo] Nibali in the grand tours. I’ve raced with some big guys.”
Ullrich, Basso and Contador all had doping scandals but does Thomas believe the leading riders today are all clean? “100%. What gave me hope back in the day was the fact they were getting caught so it wasn’t this big conspiracy. I certainly did things the right way, and the team did. Now I feel the sport has developed and changed, with nutrition and training, and some exceptional guys.
“The whole peloton is more professional now. There are 180 guys at the start that can ride fast, whereas before there was a few guys just doing it for the craic and getting paid. There was a huge gulf between first and last whereas these days it’s a lot closer.”
Team Sky’s past success has been clouded by the controversy around Richard Freeman. This August the former chief doctor of Team Sky and British Cycling received a four-year ban. Freeman had already been struck off the medical register after a tribunal ruled that he had ordered 30 sachets of testosterone to the National Cycling Centre in 2011 while “knowing or believing” it would help improve the performances of an unnamed cyclist.
“I worked with him and he always had the riders’ interests at heart and he was a good guy,” Thomas says of Freeman. “I don’t know everything that happened but I heard stories about him being suicidal. Obviously, that’s really sad.”
Freeman also arranged a therapeutic use exemption for Bradley Wiggins to take triamcinolone in June 2011. Wiggins denies any wrongdoing. Thomas says: “With the whole Brad stuff I can’t see why anyone would do anything to risk being on the wrong side of the doping. But it’s hard with Freeman. I can only speak from my side and he was always above board with me.”
Thomas became used to Team Sky being booed but “as soon as we changed sponsor [to Ineos in 2019], it became much less. It was pantomime, really, with Sky. Then we changed to Ineos and I don’t think the people booing put two and two together. They weren’t really cycling fans. And when you’re not winning, people love you more. A lot of people now don’t want Jumbo to win and the main reason is jealousy and the fact they’re dominating.”
Thomas savours the idea of competing in an Iron Man event once his career ends but, for now, he hopes he and Ineos can put a little dent in Jumbo. “They have to be very controlled,” Thomas says of the relentlessly disciplined new breed of premier cyclists, “and I don’t think I could do that. I have periods where I go 100% but then I have time where I completely switch off, I don’t even think of cycling and I eat and drink whatever. They have a different mentality now. They’re constantly thinking about biking. You can’t do that for 20 years as it’s pretty intense. They’re going to have shorter careers while I am happy to keep going a little while longer.”
Geraint Thomas’ Great Rides According to G is published by Quercus
