A look back at the career of proud Welshman Geraint Thomas, who is retiring seven years after the Classics-turned-GC rider reached the pinnacle of road cycling at the 2018 Tour de France.
Cor Vos, Kristof Ramon, Gruber Images
After 19 years, British and Welsh star Geraint Thomas finally pinned on a number for the last time as a pro cyclist on Sunday in the final stage of the Tour of Britain, which finished in his hometown of Cardiff.
A product of British Cycling’s celebrated Olympic Academy, the Welshman enjoyed particular success on the track early in his career, but after achieving back-to-back Team Pursuit Olympic gold medals in 2012, his focus turned fully to the road. In the ensuing years, he gradually evolved from a Classics rider, time trialist, and domestique into one of the world’s best stage racers, peaking with cycling’s biggest prize, the Tour de France title in 2018.
His celebrations in the months afterwards are almost as legendary as the victory itself, but one year on, he returned to the Tour’s podium, only Egan Bernal ahead of him, i.e. doing just what Thomas himself had inflicted on teammate Chris Froome 12 months before. Since then, he’s finished on a Grand Tour podium three times more, including an unlikely third place to “whippersnappers” Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar in 2022, and that agonisingly narrow defeat to Primož Roglič at the 2023 Giro d’Italia.
It’s been a few years now since Thomas won big himself, but his last visit to a Grand Tour podium was as recent as the 2024 Giro. Even so, he’s been flirting with the idea of retirement in the past few years, and at the start of 2025 the 39-year-old finally decided that the time is right to hang up his racing wheels.
“This is my 19th year as a professional and I didn’t want to do one year too many and be the grumpy guy in the team,” Thomas told BBC Breakfast in February. “I’m still really enjoying it, I still feel competitive and the last year has been good, but I think the timing’s right.”
Thomas turned pro with the short-lived but somewhat legendary Barloworld squad in 2007, making his Tour de France debut in the same year, before becoming a founding rider of the ambitious Sky Procycling project at the start of 2010. And there he stayed, making him the longest-serving rider on the British team, and, along with Ben Swift, the last survivor of the Originals (37-year-old Swift took a two-year sabbatical at UAE Team Emirates in 2017-18, and has yet to announce plans to retire).
As proud a Welshman as has ever walked the earth, it’s only fitting that Thomas chose the Tour of Britain as his grand finale, its last stage wrapping up in Cardiff, the Welsh capital where he plans to relocate with his wife Sara and young son Macs.
To mark the occasion, here are many of the highs and some of the lows in a career spanning almost two decades.
The following selection will be mostly chronological, but this Gruber shot is too hard to resist, from maybe the biggest day of Geraint Thomas’s career, when he won his second of back-to-back stages on Alpe d’Huez after taking the yellow jersey the day before. (He’s in the middle of the image, sitting on the wheel of young teammate and Tour debutant Egan Bernal.)
Thomas started his career with the second-tier Barloworld outfit, launched in 2003 as a South African team, but registered in Great Britain or Italy for most of its eight years. In his first season, Thomas was part of the nine-rider squad that took up the first of the team’s two Tour de France wildcard invites in 2007 and 2008.
18 months after turning pro, Thomas lined up with his two-time World Championship-winning Team Pursuit squad (Ed Clancy, Paul Manning, Geraint Thomas and Bradley Wiggins) at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, where they took gold ahead of Denmark and New Zealand.
Back on the road, Thomas moved to Team Sky at the start of 2010. He scored the first victory of his career at the 2010 national championships, then headed straight for his second Tour de France. After coming fifth in the prologue, the 24-year-old got in the winning move on stage 3 to Arenberg Porte du Hainaut and finished second to Norwegian champion Thor Hushovd, a result that put the young Welshman in the white jersey.
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