{"id":108559,"date":"2025-09-02T06:52:03","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T06:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/108559\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T06:52:03","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T06:52:03","slug":"geraint-thomas-happy-to-bow-out-on-home-soil-after-farewell-tour-tour-of-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/108559\/","title":{"rendered":"Geraint Thomas happy to bow out on home soil after farewell tour | Tour of Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Geraint Thomas will close his long and illustrious racing career with a farewell appearance in the 2025 men\u2019s Tour of Britain<\/a>, which begins in Suffolk on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Six days of racing will take a high-quality peloton from the eastern town of Woodbridge, to the mouth of the Severn, for a final cele\u00adbratory stage next Sunday in Cardiff, which will provide a fitting climax to the Welshman\u2019s career.<\/p>\n

For Thomas, the wheel will have turned full circle, as his final professional race takes him back to south Wales where his path to Olympic and Tour de France success began, at the Maindy velodrome.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I didn\u2019t live so close to Maindy or if I didn\u2019t live in Cardiff, I may never have ridden a bike, never have had the career I had, the life I\u2019ve had,\u201d Thomas told the BBC.<\/p>\n

It may have helped that his former coach Rod Ellingworth, one of his past mentors at British Cycling<\/a> and Team Sky, is now race director of the British Cycling-run Tour of \u00adBritain.<\/p>\n

Of the Welsh climax to the race, Thomas said: \u201cI just feel so lucky to be able to call time on my career on my own terms, when I\u2019m finishing and even more lucky to decide where, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas expects there to be tears when he bows out in Cardiff after a 19\u2011season racing career. Among the highs are his 2018 Tour de France victory<\/a> including a memorable stage win on Alpe d\u2019Huez, his gold medals in the \u00adOlympic and Commonwealth Games, and \u00admultiple successes in other stage races such as the \u00adCrite\u00adrium du\u00a0\u00adDauphine and Paris-Nice.<\/p>\n

To mark the occasion, he will be wearing a fiery red jersey that cele\u00adbrates his achievements and his Welshness, and that incorporates a Welsh dragon, the hairpins to the and a sketch of Thomas on a podium, by his young son, Macs.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly the most meaningful \u00adjersey, that\u2019s for sure,\u201d Thomas said on social media. \u201cI think it definitely will be emotional come the final stage, finishing in Cardiff, wearing this.\u201d<\/p>\n

First, though, he has to navigate a punchy race route, that gets more challenging as it nears the Welsh border. The rolling roads of the opening few stages, with finishes in \u00adSouthwold, Stowmarket, Ampthill and Burton Dassett, are succeeded by two days of racing in the climbs of south Wales. The penultimate stage takes in two ascents of the short but steep climb of the Tumble, over\u00adlooking Abergavenny, while the final day\u2019s racing tackles the first category climb of Caerphilly Mountain, just 10\u00a0\u00adkilometres from the finish.<\/p>\n

Headlining alongside Thomas are Remco Evenepoel, winner of the road race and time trial in the Paris Olympics, Kelso\u2019s Oscar Onley, the breakthrough star of July\u2019s Tour de France, the former world champion Julian Alaphilippe, and the fast-rising British sprinter Matthew Brennan.<\/p>\n

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The former British national champion Fred Wright, Ben Wiggins (son of Sir Bradley), Joe Blackmore (winner of the 2024 Tour de l\u2019Avenir), and the 2020 Giro d\u2019Italia winner Tao Geoghegan Hart, set to return after a period of injury and illness, are also expected to start.<\/p>\n

Remco Evenepoel will add quality to the Tour of Britain field. Photograph: Anne-Christine Poujoulat\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Although there remains no apparent British successor to Thomas\u2019s 2018 Tour win, his legacy to cycling is evidenced by the number of young Britons now racing at elite level, across Europe. Perhaps Thomas\u2019s greatest attribute has been his resilience, allied to a gallows sense of humour.<\/p>\n

Asked in July by his rival Jonas Vingegaard if he was happy to be starting his final Tour de France, Thomas replied: \u201cMate, I should have stopped last year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Geraint Thomas will close his long and illustrious racing career with a farewell appearance in the 2025 men\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-108559","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}