{"id":204555,"date":"2025-12-26T07:28:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T07:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/204555\/"},"modified":"2025-12-26T07:28:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T07:28:06","slug":"footballer-geoff-thomas-not-ruling-out-another-cycling-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/204555\/","title":{"rendered":"Footballer Geoff Thomas not ruling out another cycling challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Thomas spoke of the 2025 ride and recalled one steep 18-mile climb in the Alps which took him to his limit, particularly when it suddenly started to rain and then snow.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I was about two turns away from the top and I was crying my eyes out,&#8221; Thomas said. &#8220;There was nothing there but this pain.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But he said it felt like he had &#8220;people on his shoulder&#8221; to support him, including some he knew who had lost their lives to leukaemia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;They&#8217;d lost their battle but they were with me in that moment as I got to the top,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said after starting the descent, wearing coats provided by the support team, the sun came out &#8220;all of a sudden&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said: &#8220;I just thought &#8216;wow, if I can do that, I can do anything&#8217;.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Thomas, 61, was appointed an MBE for his work to raise money for cancer charities in 2021.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Tour 21 challenge, which is 2,200 miles (3,540km) in total, is held every year with the aim of raising \u00a31m for Cure Leukaemia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thomas spoke of the 2025 ride and recalled one steep 18-mile climb in the Alps which took him&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-204555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}