Gee whizzer comes of age as he pulls on yellow jersey
At a party at the end of the 2007 Tour de France, Geraint Thomas sat down, his eyes hollow, his body spent. He had finished his first Tour in 140th place out of the 141 riders. He was just 21. And he was stuffed.
He was part of that famous Barloworld team that made history. A South Africansponsored team led by Robbie Hunter while registered in Britain, and based and run by an Italian in Italy, South Africans regarded them as their own.
Hunter was the only South African in the team that year. Well, save for Gary Blem, the mechanic. Blem is now with Team Sky, the British outfit for whom Thomas won the 11th stage of the Tour on Wednesday, and then pulled on the coveted yellow jersey.
The year 2007 was a glorious time for South African cycling. As the race flew into Montpellier, Hunter took a flier and held off time-trial beast Fabian Cancellara to become the first African to win a stage in the Tour de France.
Hunter always believed it could happen. He was involved in just about every kick in every sprint stage before he finally got his victory. And behind him, riding his heart out every day, was Thomas doing a passable imitation of a tank engine.
Never stopping. Never giving up. Always getting to the end. Always doing his job for Hunter, getting the South African into position for the sprint.
When asked by the Guardian how he was going during the 2007 Tour, Thomas told the newspaper: “I’m loving it.”
British rider David Millar gave a little more depth to those three words: “Gee [Geraint] has a soft face, but he’s like one of the penguins in the film Madagascar. He looks cuddly but every now and then you get a look from him which makes you realise he’s anything but.”
At the age of 21 he was already a star in track racing, a world champion in the 4,000m team pursuit for Britain.
Three years before he had won the junior version of the Paris-Roubaix. It was Thomas’s first World Tour race. He was riding from day to day, looking forward to the first rest day when he said he was loving it.
The Barloworld team manager, Claudio Corti, never held back when assessing a rider. Thomas, he said, had “some fat to lose”, but “the key thing is that he can ride at 60km/h”.
Corti believed Thomas could become a good sprinter in three to four years. Thomas had slightly different ambitions. “I’m not a pure sprinter like Cav [Team Dimension Data’s Mark Cavendish], but I’ve got a bit of a kick and I can get over the climbs at the end of a hard race.”
In early 2009, Thomas was still part of Barloworld. Chris Froome had just joined the team. I met Thomas at the team’s preseason training camp in Tuscany. Over a couple of beers he told a mostly unrepeatable, bust-your-gutlaughing tale about being dope tested after a big night out in the off season. There are some smells even an antidoping official cannot sit through.
In 2013 David O’Sullivan, the broadcaster and my old mate, was going to ride the Telkom 947 Cycle Challenge to raise funds for the Teddy Bear Clinic.
Daryl Impey, who had become the first African to wear the yellow jersey at the Tour de France that year, agreed to ride with him and dragged Thomas along. Thomas looked a little green on the morning of the race. Impey admitted they may have finished all the alcohol at his house during a braai the night before.
Thomas did not bail. He rode with us all, piloting his wife on a tandem around Joburg. More than R400,000 was raised for the Teddy Bear Clinic that day.
On Thursday, Thomas woke up in the yellow jersey. On Wednesday, he showed that, as he said in 2007, he can get over the climbs and that he definitely does have a kick. He does not look as cuddly as he once did. He is no longer the 21-year-old slumped on a chair at a party in Paris wondering just how the hell he got through the biggest cycling race in the world.
He is now Gee Thomas — Tour de France contender.