After his last attempt at completing the full Tour de France route ended with severe knee pain and climbing off the bike, former professional footballer Geoff Thomas is getting set to return to the Tour21 event this year in order to raise money for Cure Leukaemia.
Thomas was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukaemia in 2003, but then rode the full over 3,000km race route in 2005 for the first time after he entered remission. Each year, a group of amateur cyclists has followed in his footsteps and ridden the whole course one week before the professionals pass through.
The cobbles of northern France put an end to the former Crystal Palace captain's last attempt to complete the route, but Thomas, who turned 60 earlier this year, says some new specialist medical treatment has enabled him to push through the pain in order to give the route a go one more time.
"I actually had to get on a different bike because mine had a bit of a malfunction on the cobbles in 2022," Thomas explained. "But then the setup on the new bike actually wrecked my knees, so I ended up having to get off the bike a couple of days after.
"I'd done it in 2021 and, in many ways, I should have just finished then on a high. That was such a magical time, straight after Covid. It was really amazing because not only had we all been released from the shackles of staying at home, we all bonded really quickly as a team and ended up raising one million pounds."
Thomas explained that an offered donation of £100,000 from a fellow rider convinced him to return to the event in 2022 before climbing off left a "sour taste" in his mouth and meant he knew he would have to return.
While finding himself contemplating surgery to correct the pain he'd been suffering with in his knees, Thomas was contacted by the Premier League's Chief Medical Officer, Mark Gillett, who had completed the ride that same year, with help.
"He [Gillett] knew what I was going through with my knees as I've got grade four arthritis in both," Thomas said. "After football my cartilage is all shot, I’ve had cruciate ligament repairs on both knees too. "All I can describe it [Arthrosamid] as is like a cushion that's gone into my knees. Even on a bike I was getting that horrible bone on bone feeling, so I had this injection around last December and then a couple of weeks after I was out on the bike and that feeling had gone."
"It gave me the confidence to go out on my bike again and ever since then I've just gone and done more and more as I build back up to this," Thomas added. "I did a 115 mile ride last week. I try to get out more or less four or five times a week and I'm steadily building up again. My right knee actually feels like I could go for a run or jog on it again, and I haven't felt like that for 15 years now."
With his departure for France getting closer, Thomas will soon have to reckon with a return to the slopes of Mont Ventoux during a mountain heavy final week. As well as the iconic climb, the riders tackling Tour21 will have to take on summit finishes atop the Col de la Loze and at La Plagne in the French Alps.
"I know exactly what it's all about," Thomas said of Ventoux, having tackled the climb on two previous occasions. "I don't really tend to look too deeply into what's coming up each day. I've been up so many mountains now that they all just blur into one. Ventoux stands out, because it's so iconic, but the rest just all blur together."
"By the time you get to Paris you feel like you've all really bonded," he added. "I've always likened it to battling what I did with my Leukaemia. There's days when it's really tough, there's days when you feel a bit better, but then the end game is the finish and Paris. Getting to Paris is like that moment when you get told you're in remission. It mirrors so many things that I experienced with my illness."
You can make a donation to Cure Leukaemia and support Tour21 at the event's JustGiving page.
