Who’s Geraint Thomas?

Where did he come from? And why did he win the Tour de France at age 32?

So many questions about the soon to be (this article was written yesterday) Tour de France champion that need an answer.

Sir Geraint Thomas (SKY) is from Wales and has been a professional cyclist since 2005. The reason why you didn’t hear much from Thomas is that his first specialty when he got into the sport was a rider in the track or a velodrome. He was the World Champion in the various disciplines of the track like the Scratch, the Points Race, the Madison and the team pursuit. He also was a part of the team that won Gold in the Olympics for team pursuit.

Unlike most riders for the Tour de France, he didn’t start his career on the road. The difference is that in the track, a rider generally needs more muscle that a rider who rides for the Tour.

On the road, he was good in the one day races. He won the Junior Paris-Roubaix and had good placings in MIlan-San-Remo, Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders. He won his first semi-classic Harelbeke in 2015 after attacking Peter Sagan and another rider.

Thomas also won one week stage races like the 2006 Flèche  de Sud, the 2011 and 2014 Bayern Rundfarht, the 2015/16 Volta ao Algarve, the 2016 Paris-Nice, the 2017 Tour of the Alps, and just a month ago, the Criterium du Dauphine, a race that identifies the future winner of a Tour.

If you look closely at Thomas’s palmares, its unlikely that he is a Grand Tour winner, much less a TdF champion. Thats why were are people from certain quarters who think that Thomas is doping, since, as the saying goes, you can’t convert a donkey to a racehorse. Thomas is hardly a donkey but just like his friend and 2012 Tour champion Bradley Wiggins,  he started his career not as a Tour contender but a rider on the track and that resulted in raised eyebrows. In fact, his best place finish was in 2015/16, both 15th places in the overall classification.

Thomas, in the local vernacular, is what we would call as, “ahente sa pangos”. He crashed so many times in races that he was supposed to do well. In this year’s Tour, he didn’t even touch the ground.  That’s why in some weird way, I didn’t pick him to win since I was expecting him to crash.

I also doubt that if Thomas has been riding for a team other than SKY, he would bot win. SKY, behind the money of newspaper mogul Rupert Murdoch, has a budget of  $45 million. Compare that to team Sunweb, Tom Duoulin’s team, who has a budget of  $20 million. You see in cycling, you can buy speed, you can buy domestiques, you can buy technology and  you can buy luxury.

But I think only team SKY has transformed track riders into Grand Tour winners and if they continue to get backing from their sponsors, I’m sure they will dominate in the years to come- not with Chris Froome or Thomas maybe, but watch out for the 21yo superstar in the making, Egan Bernal.

Barring any force majeure, Thomas will win this years Tour de France. Chapeau!