“I’m pretty laidback and don’t take myself too seriously off the bike,” Geraint Thomas says as, in retirement, the 2018 Tour de France winner reflects on the contrast between his relaxed public persona and his real self. “I think people assume I’m like that in every aspect of my life. But when it came to training and racing I took it really seriously. I did everything I could to reach my very best and always go as deep as possible. I had that determination to perform.”
The 39-year-old Welshman pauses as he thinks of his old contemporaries Mark Cavendish and Bradley Wiggins: “Cav was obviously a lot more outspoken. I didn’t tend to tell people what I was hoping to do. And Brad’s spoken recently about how he had troubles in the past while he portrayed the whole rock-star image.
“I was the total opposite to both of them, just a normal bloke from Cardiff who you would go down the pub with and have a pint – who then ended up winning the Tour. That’s the bit people might find weird when they don’t really know me. They don’t see the hard work you do from November to the race in July. They just see the finished product and assume that it’s easy, especially when you’ve had a long career.”
Thomas shakes his head. “But to continue at that level needed determination, discipline and commitment, and that was hard. That was one thing I wanted to get across in the book.”
Thomas’s new autobiography covers the gamut of his extraordinary career, from the incredible highs to the harrowing lows. As accessible and appealing as Thomas himself, the book is at its most compelling when it charts the ambition and suffering which means that he is very far from the “normal bloke” in a pub.
“Yes, yes,” Thomas says in a soft echo when I ask if that suffering defines professional cycling. He recalls riding most of the 2013 Tour de France with a fractured pelvis. He finished second last out of 141 riders but still played a part in helping Chris Froome win the race. That matched his final position in 2007 when he was the youngest rider on the Tour and essentially a track racer who had no experience of climbing brutal mountains. “In ’07 and ’13 I was suffering every day and that’s when you find you can go deeper and suffer a lot more than you think. You finish the day and think: ‘I’m completely spent, there’s absolutely no way I can go again.’ But you have dinner, go to sleep and get up – ‘Right, let’s do it.’ There’s no part of you that will quit. That just makes you stronger.”
Thomas adds: “The training is the hard bit. The racing is easy when there are fans and emotion and adrenaline. That’s the fun bit. It’s all those hard yards you’ve got to do that take such self-discipline. A lot of the time you’re on your own. There’s no one stood there, making sure you go out and do it.”
Now that it’s all over, with Thomas completing his final race last month, will he miss aspects of that suffering? “I will miss the intensity, the routine and having that goal to work towards and that pressure. That’s been my life for 20-odd years. You wake up every morning knowing what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. That’s what I will have to find again otherwise you go a bit crazy. I want to do an Ironman or something to push me mentally and physically.”
Thomas’s longevity is, perhaps, the most admirable aspect of his career. “I think so,” he agrees. “I heard the other day that my 18 years from my first Tour to my last Tour was the longest by any rider during that time. It’s something I’m really proud of. All the wins are great but being able to be competitive and stay at the top for that long is special.”
He picks out his Tour de France victory in 2018 and his Olympic gold medals in 2008 and 2012 as “huge” highlights but he is “just as proud of coming back from all the disappointments and injuries”.
Thomas probably should have won one more Grand Tour and losing the 2023 Giro d’Italia hurts the most. He seemed on course to win the race until, on the penultimate day, he lost the lead surprisingly to Primoz Roglic. “The Giro was definitely tough and the one that got away. But I don’t have any regrets.”
Last year Thomas proved his enduring quality when he made his fifth Grand Tour podium by finishing third in the Giro – behind Danny Martínez and the imperious Tadej Pogacar. “I was super-proud of that,” Thomas says. “Obviously a pretty special guy in Pog won the race. So it was almost like a race for second. Danny pipped me but to be on the podium at 38 made me just as proud as winning the Tour.”
Assessing the greatest riders he competed against, Thomas discusses Peter Sagan and Froome before making it clear how Pogacar is the most brilliant of them all. “Sagan was super-talented and, while he wasn’t built like a climber, some of the climbs he got over and the races he won were incredible. Froomey as well, especially considering his [Kenyan] background. He just had that engine, that raw talent. But it’s hard to see past Pogacar. He’s definitely the best of the generation and it’s unreal what he’s doing, winning one-day races all the way through to Grand Tours, smashing everyone in the Alps. It’s insane.”
Thomas is convinced that Pogacar’s success is built on pure talent and hard work and he argues that the sport is cleaner than ever. “100%. It’s easy for me to say: ‘Well, if I can win the Tour clean, then anyone can’ – but for me it taints the present that we still have to speak about doping a lot. At the same time, [such scrutiny] really helped clean up the sport. I think there is a hell of a lot more testing in cycling than other sports.”
There is a sobering passage in his book where Thomas remembers how, in 2006, he rode briefly as a stagiaire for the Spanish team Saunier Duval. He did not extend his internship and two years later Saunier were caught up in a doping scandal and forced to leave the Tour in the middle of the race: “Had I joined Saunier Duval or Phonak/iShares [a team infamous for doping controversies], I might have seen a whole other world. How would I have reacted, as a young man surrounded by the powerful and habitual? I’m fortunate I never had to find out.”
Thomas says now: “I was lucky I didn’t go into that team and was never put in that position. Sky came in and the whole British Cycling mentality was my safety net.” He spent 15 years with Team Sky, whose sponsor name changed to Ineos Grenadiers in 2019, but the legacy of Dave Brailsford’s project has been tarnished by numerous controversies which have never been fully answered. Surely there were times when Thomas went to the management to ask what the hell was happening – from the Jiffy-gate scandal surrounding Dr Richard Freeman to the revelations this year that David Rozman, a long-term member of the Ineos staff, had left the Tour after the International Testing Agency launched an investigation into alleged messages he exchanged in 2012 with the convicted doping doctor Mark Schmidt.
“It wasn’t great, the way the team dealt with it,” Thomas says of the Rozman saga. “But it’s a tough one if you get a doctor that’s been in cycling for a while. I’m not saying they’re all dodgy, by any means, but if someone’s been in the sport 15 years, the possibility of them having some sort of link [to a drugs’ cheat] is pretty high. It’s been tough, all these things happening over the years with the team. But, as a rider, all you can do is worry about yourself and the next race.”
Rozman was also part of the British Cycling setup at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics and so Thomas has known him for a long time. Was he surprised by the news of Rozman’s links to Schmidt? “I wasn’t surprised that he knew some doctor that ended up being a bit suspect. But just because you know someone doesn’t mean you’re guilty. I was surprised at how quickly it blew up and the bad press he was getting.”
Surely he understands that Ineos and Rozman were being asked legitimate and important questions? “Yes, but I think it could have been looked at without it all coming out. I think if you looked at other teams as intensely, then there will be lots of questions about them. It shows we’re held to a different standard than a lot of other teams.”
Ineos have struggled competitively in recent years and it makes sense that they will offer Thomas a new role next year to help improve the team’s engagement with their riders. “It will be looking at their goals and how they’re going to execute them. So it’s a role where I’ll work alongside the coaches and the DS [directeur sportif] and be that go-between between senior management and the riders – with the goal of stepping up myself in years to come. I’ve got lots of knowledge and experience when it comes to racing but there will be a lot of learning for me from Dave as well.”
Thomas stresses: “We still need to dot the i’s and cross the t’s so nothing’s definitely done or official yet. But I think I can help them out a lot going forward so that’s exciting.”
So many different emotions swirled through him on his final day of racing as the Tour of Britain ended in his home town of Cardiff. “I felt a lump in my throat and was almost choking up on the bike in the last 3km. Some riders were coming up and saying: ‘Oh, G, it’s been amazing to ride with you, it’s been an honour.’ I was trying not to pay too much attention because it was getting me emotional.”
He remembers that, “in the final kilometre, me and Swifty [Ben Swift] were riding next to each other. We grew up racing together when we were 12 and so to finish alongside one of my best mates was super-special.”
What did he think as he crossed the finish line? “The main thing was just trying not to cry because I realised that chapter was over and it’s not a sad moment. It was joyous and happy. I was like: ‘I can’t start bawling now.’”
Thomas smiles, but soon the ambition that defines him returns as he looks to the future. “It’s something that’s always been in me, wanting to push myself and do the best. Even in school, with GCSEs or A-levels, even though I was busy racing my bike, I still wanted to do well. So whatever I end up doing now, I definitely still want to be as good as I can be.”
According to G by Geraint Thomas (Quercus Publishing, £25). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
