{"id":371382,"date":"2025-12-25T17:41:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T17:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/371382\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T17:41:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T17:41:12","slug":"it-motivated-me-even-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/371382\/","title":{"rendered":"‘It motivated me even more’"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a 19-year professional career, Geraint Thomas<\/a> has said goodbye to the sport<\/a>. It was a career full of noise, change and success. From classics specialist to Tour de France winner – who would have seen that coming? Speaking to L\u2019\u00c9quipe<\/a>, the Welshman looks back on his rise as a rider, and on the emergence of Team Sky<\/a>. It proved to be a historic turning point in modern cycling.<\/p>\n

Anyone who only followed the final ten years of Thomas\u2019 career might hardly realize just how good he once was on the cobbles. As a junior, however, that was exactly his specialty. He won both Kuurne\u2013Brussels\u2013Kuurne and Paris\u2013Roubaix at junior level. As a Brit, he was something of an oddity at the time, a surprise among Belgians and Dutch riders.<\/p>\n

In Kuurne, despite taking victory, Thomas realised he was still behind his peers in certain aspects. Cycling culture in Belgium was simply different. \u201cI might have been winning races in Great Britain, but in Belgium everything was on another level. I remember walking into the changing room, smelling the oil, the warming creams – everything felt more professional. They had their own mechanic, or their dad did everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Continue reading below the photo!<\/p>\n

\"geraint-thomas\"\/Thomas shares hilarious junior Paris\u2013Roubaix anecdote<\/p>\n

A year later, Thomas won the junior edition of Paris\u2013Roubaix, and he still laughs when recalling the prize he received. \u201cI won a small chocolate cobblestone, but also my body weight in chocolate,\u201d Thomas says. \u201cThey asked how much I weighed; I must have said 80 kilos, and the guy looked me up and down in disbelief.\u201d Whether he actually received – and ate – all 80 kilos remains unanswered.<\/p>\n

Thomas made his Tour de France debut in 2007. As a 21-year-old neo-pro, he lined up with the continental Barloworld squad in London. \u201cThey basically picked me because the start was there, I was the youngest (21, ed.), and it was good publicity for Barloworld. My friends came to cheer me on, wearing masks with my face on them – it even made the newspapers. It was madness. I never thought it would happen so quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Continue reading below the photo!<\/p>\n

\"geraintThomas open about battling the doubters<\/p>\n

At the time, no one could have predicted what kind of Grand Tour rider Thomas would become. Team Sky clearly saw something: when the British outfit was founded in 2010, Thomas was among the riders who joined immediately. It turned out to be a perfect match, as he would ride for the team right through to his retirement this year.<\/p>\n

The team made its debut in the team time trial at the Tour of Qatar in 2010, with Thomas in the line-up. \u201cA lot of people didn\u2019t like us: a new team, lots of money, big talk, not from a traditional cycling country\u2026 We had rollers to warm up, and no one else did. Everyone looked at us and said: \u2018Who the hell are these guys? You young lads don\u2019t belong here.\u2019 And then we won.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas often felt that people were against him, whether that was always true is debatable. \u201cSometimes I made up stories in my own head,\u201d he admits. \u201cIn 2019, even though I hadn\u2019t actually heard it, I thought: \u2018People probably think my Tour win in 2018 was just a fluke.\u2019 That only motivated me more.\u201d And with results to back it up: a year after winning the Tour de France, Thomas finished second overall in Paris – behind teammate Egan Bernal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a 19-year professional career, Geraint Thomas has said goodbye to the sport. It was a career full…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,79612,66980,85,200877],"class_list":{"0":"post-371382","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-geraint-thomas","12":"tag-ineos-grenadiers","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-team-sky"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371382","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=371382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}