{"id":358577,"date":"2025-12-19T16:05:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T16:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/358577\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T16:05:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T16:05:24","slug":"8-remarkable-highlights-that-defined-the-19-year-career-of-geraint-thomas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/358577\/","title":{"rendered":"8 remarkable highlights that defined the 19-year career of Geraint Thomas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Geraint Thomas called time on 19 years of professional riding at the end of the 2025 season, drawing to a close a career that saw the Welshman establish himself as a prolific winner on both the road and track, with his crowning glory of course coming in 2018, when he won the Tour de France.<\/p>\n

Thomas also won the Lifetime Achievement gong in our 2025 Rider of the Year Awards, supported by Lezyne, in recognition of a remarkable career.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve picked out eight of the 39-year-old’s best achievements from his long, illustrious time on two wheels, to prove just how deserving he is of this accolade.<\/p>\n

Riding his whole professional career without one of his organs
\n\"GeraintGeraint Thomas as a fresh-faced youngster, riding for Great Britain in the under-23 World Championship road race. Getty Images<\/p>\n

The season before turning pro, the then-world junior scratch race champion ended up in intensive care in Sydney, Australia, facing the loss of his spleen, which had ruptured. <\/p>\n

The 18-year-old had come down heavily in a crash when a piece of metal mangled his bike\u2019s forks, and after arriving in hospital, his condition deteriorated to the extent that doctors had to remove his spleen to save his life.<\/p>\n

The spleen is a small organ just above the stomach that helps to prevent your body from infection. Although you can live without it, your body is more at risk of infection. Try telling that to a rider with one of the best sick records of the past two decades\u2026<\/p>\n

Longest Tour de France career of any past yellow jersey winner
\n\"GeraintThomas started the Tour de France 14 times in his career, and finished the race on 13 occasions. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Speaking of durability and longevity, we were trying to think of a stat to tell the story of Thomas\u2019 remarkably long career at the top.<\/p>\n

The still-active Chris Froome, 40, might argue, but few general classification riders make it to the age that Thomas, 39, has. <\/p>\n

And if you discount 2025\u2019s victory lap of a season, he was still competing at the sharp end of Grand Tours as recently as 2024 \u2013 unlike Froome, who never regained his top level after his 2019 crash. <\/p>\n

Thomas\u2019 14 Tour de France appearances put him 15th on the overall list, with only Joop Zoetemelk and Lucien Van Impe as former winners ahead of him. Neither can match Thomas\u2019 longevity, however, with those 14 appearances spanning an incredible 18 years (2007-2025).<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something I\u2019m really proud of. All the wins are great but being able to be competitive and stay at the top for that long is special,\u201d he told The Guardian this year.<\/p>\n

Third at the 2024 Giro d\u2019Italia
\n\"GeraintThomas finished third at the 2024 Giro d’Italia, behind Tadej Poga\u010dar and Dani Martinez. Getty Images<\/p>\n

For a man who valued longevity so highly, it should come as no surprise to find how much he rated his third place behind the irrepressible Tadej Poga\u010dar at the 2024 Giro d\u2019Italia. <\/p>\n

A year earlier, he\u2019d been edged agonisingly into second at the Giro on the penultimate stage by Primo\u017e Rogli\u010d \u2013 a near-miss that might have finished other 37-year-olds off.<\/p>\n

When Thomas returned to Italy in 2024, wounds not yet healed, it was no close-run thing. Poga\u010dar, as expected, crushed the race, winning six stages and the general classification by nearly 10 minutes. <\/p>\n

But in third, just behind former team-mate Dani Martinez, but ahead of many younger GC riders, was the ageless Thomas, who would later say a Giro podium at 38 gave him as much pride as winning the Tour de France.<\/p>\n

Winning the 2018 Tour de France
\n\"GeraintVictory atop Alpe d’Huez. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Yes, winning the Tour de France \u2013 it\u2019s a good time to mention that. Such was Team Sky\u2019s dominance at the time (they\u2019d won five of the previous six Tours), the churlish take on Thomas\u2019 2018 yellow jersey was that it was simply his time to step up and get the win for the world\u2019s leading team. <\/p>\n

But that would be to ignore the fact that a) nobody wins a race as difficult or as complex as this one like that and b) this was very much a race that Thomas won himself. <\/p>\n

Battling not only external rivals but internal frictions, such as the role of then-reigning Vuelta and Giro champion Chris Froome, he soared to back-to-back Alpine stage wins at La Rosi\u00e8re and, most memorably, Alpe d\u2019Huez, to cement his position as the strongest rider in the race.<\/p>\n

A one-team man
\n\"GeraintThomas outlasted Dave Brailsford’s initial run at Team Sky\/Ineos. Getty Images<\/p>\n

After that career peak, Thomas would spend almost as long at Sky (and soon to be Ineos) as he had done leading up to 2018. <\/p>\n

Since the team was created in 2010, he\u2019s been the one ever-present \u2013 even Dave Brailsford, the long-time team principal, has taken time out of the team as the head of Ineos\u2019 wider sports division, which includes Manchester United. <\/p>\n

Given Thomas\u2019 status in the team, and the fact he\u2019s a native English speaker and convivial with the media, he was often the point man to the press during the team\u2019s many controversies: the TUEs (Therapeutic Use Exemptions), Jiffy Bag-gate, Richard Freeman and the hiring of staff without due diligence on their pasts.<\/p>\n

A defender of his team as well as not being shy to say when they’ve got things wrong, Thomas has gained enough media savvy to be useful to their communications department when he moves into a management role with the team in 2026.<\/p>\n

Sports Personality of the Year winner in 2018
\n\"GeraintThomas, pictured at the 2018 SPOTY with his wife, Sara. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Thomas\u2019 affability made him a shoo-in for the 2018 BBC SPOTY awards in 2018, on the back of his Tour de France win.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s arguably the most prestigious sports awards ceremony in the UK, and Thomas is the most recent of four cyclists to win the award this century, after the three Sirs: Chris Hoy (2008), Mark Cavendish (2011) and Bradley Wiggins (2012).<\/p>\n

Despite British wins in other major races, including two Giro victories \u2013 in 2020 (Tao Geoghegan Hart) and 2025 (Simon Yates), no race strikes a chord with the British public like the Tour does.<\/p>\n

2014 Commonwealth Games gold
\n\"GeraintA rare outing in the Welsh jersey saw Thomas win the 2014 Commonwealth Games road race in torrid conditions. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Thomas was the fifth Welsh sportsperson to win SPOTY\u2019s top gong and was no doubt spurred on by a strong vote from his countryfolk. <\/p>\n

There is no prouder Welshman than Thomas and that goes some way to explaining why his best performance for the national team on the road came not representing Great Britain at the Olympics or Worlds but riding for Wales at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.<\/p>\n

The Commonwealth field wasn\u2019t the strongest, with cycling\u2019s European heartlands not a part of the Games, but to win alone in a rare outing in Welsh colours clearly meant the world to G.<\/p>\n

2012 Olympic team pursuit gold
\n\"GeraintThomas (right) won his second Olympic gold medal with (L-R) Ed Clancy, Steven Burke and Pete Kennaugh. Getty Images<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say Thomas didn\u2019t enjoy success in Great Britain colours. <\/p>\n

He was a key lieutenant to Mark Cavendish, a rider he\u2019d grown up with on the Great Britain development squad, on the Manx\u2019s way to winning the UCI Road Race World Championship in Copenhagen in 2011, then enjoyed collective gold in the team pursuit on the track in Beijing in 2008. <\/p>\n

The peak would come four years later in London, where, cheered on by a partisan home crowd, the pursuit team repeated the feat. The decision to target the Olympics meant he missed being part of the team that won the Tour de France with Bradley Wiggins, although there\u2019d be plenty of that to come down the road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Geraint Thomas called time on 19 years of professional riding at the end of the 2025 season, drawing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-358577","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}