FRESH PERSPECTIVE FRESH LEGS
Thomas back to tackle the Tour
Geraint Thomas looks ahead to the Tour de France, and talks about the new focus that has come with fatherhood, and how lockdown has rekindled his love of racing
Taking stock, reassessing, gaining a new perspective. It’s been a common story this year and Geraint Thomas — the Welsh third of Team Ineos’s trio of Tour de France hitmen — is no different.
“This lockdown period has definitely made me realise that I still love just racing really, and that’s what I want to do,” he told Cycling Weekly from his Monaco home, as he was getting ready to put the finishing touches to his training ahead of the coming season. “Because I enjoy training — I enjoy riding my bike and you know, pushing yourself,” he underlines, “but there comes a point when you’re just like, Oh, I need that competition.”
While most of us would have contented ourselves with that level of personal insight, Thomas has experienced a whole new level of profundity since the end of the last season, having had a baby boy, Max, with his wife Sara in October.
The 34-year-old says becoming a father has freshened his perspective, enabling him to see the bigger picture. “You know, if you have a crap day on the bike or whatever, and then come back and come back to him... yeah, you realise there’s bigger things,” he says.
And while you’d imagine it’s easy to lose sight of career goals when you have the responsibility of parenthood to think about, Thomas says if anything it’s strengthened his resolve to do things properly on the bike.
“It’s definitely a different dimension now with the boy but I think it does make you focus and commit a bit more — I guess be a bit more productive with everything you’re doing. And you know, when you go away — not that I’ve been away much now, but, you know, to the odd camp or whatever — well, for one you enjoy the sleep, but you’re just able to sort of commit to it more I think,” he says.
His son couldn’t have timed his arrival better, Thomas says — he turned up just a few days into the off-season and Thomas was able to get in some serious dad-time. “The first three to four weeks I was just trying to help out as much as I can. As well as doing all the cooking and cleaning and stuff,” he says.
It got harder when he had to train properly again though: “Obviously when you’re not training, you’re not as tired. But there’s a bit of a shock then once I came back out here [to Monaco],
“I enjoy riding my bike and training but I need that competition”
and then it was training again and obviously, family and stuff aren’t around. So then it was a bit more like whoah, this is a shock to the system. But to be fair, we were lucky. He’s slept very well.”
Lockdown positives
Family Thomas moved back to Cardiff once lockdown hit, where family were nearer (even if not exactly accessible) and training outside was allowed.
“With the whole lockdown thing, taking the positives from it, I’ve got to spend so much more time with him than I would have ever got to… seeing him change and develop before for my eyes rather than on Facetime. That’s been really nice,” Thomas says.
At the height of the pandemic he still
found the time to raise money for the NHS, and his three 12-hour back-to-back ‘NHS Zwift Shifts’ on the indoor trainer raised an astonishing £375,528 — something he describes as “definitely hard”, and “right up there with some wins actually”.
Double up
It’s debatable though whether it would be right up there with the win he is hoping to repeat next month in France. When CW spoke to him, work had started in earnest on readying himself for the Tour de France, and he was preparing himself for training camps in Tenerife and the Alps.
“It’ll be good just to get in that team environment again, rather than just grinding away on your own,” he says. Never mind that two of his teammates, Chris Froome and Egan Bernal, are two of the likely figures to prevent him successfully winning that twotour crown. Going into the postponed racing season following the longest break from competition anyone can remember, it’s been pretty hard to gauge anybody’s form (anyone in the Worldtour you talk to is putting their money on some surprise performances — good and bad). After last week’s Dauphiné, the Ineos pecking order also seemed no clearer, with Thomas himself, Tour champ Egan Bernal and Chris Froome all showing signs of weakness. Thomas doesn’t even have the luxury of being allowed to
“It’ll be good to be in the team environment rather than just grinding on your own”
try to claw back time on these ‘halfrivals’, like he would a challenger from another team — once team orders judge either Bernal or Froome as having the best chance of winning, then Thomas will have to become domestique.
But the Welshman isn’t thinking about those two. A graduate from the British Cycling track medal factory, Thomas learned a long time ago that it’s all about controlling the controllables.
‘A bit of a machine’
“I’m not even bothered about what they’re doing or what, I dunno, Jumbo are doing or whatever,” he says. “I’m just in my own little bubble at the moment, and just making sure that I’m as good as I can be.”
Sir Bradley Wiggins certainly believes in him — earlier on in lockdown on his Eurosport show, the 2012 Tour winner opined that, “G is a bit of a machine… I actually think G will turn up in better condition for the Tour than if he was racing.”
Thomas himself gives credence to Wiggins’s remarks, saying: “At the moment, it’s just a case of just trying to get there as good as I can be. It’s just a lot of training, and it can get quite repetitive sometimes, doing the same sort of training… the same sort of three or four-day blocks. It’s good to try and mix that up a bit.”
It has helped, too, that the Welshman isn’t afraid of putting in the miles in his own company — a matter that for a long time he had no choice in. “I don’t mind it — I don’t mind doing the odd ride on my own anyway, before all this,” he says. “But it’ll definitely be strange riding in a group again, because I’ve not ridden in a group since mid-march. It’s gonna be a bit of a shock.”
Last year’s Tour — where he came second on GC behind Bernal — while perhaps not quite as successful personally as it could have been, gave him a lot of satisfaction, he says.
“[I was] super-proud to end up second, with everything that I had to deal with — it was mid-november by the time I started training again… such
a long layoff with everything that came with winning the Tour,” he recalls.
There was also that small matter of becoming a parent, and further down the line a serious crash in Tour de Suisse. He brushes off the idea that that left him in less than optimal physical shape, but says: “It might have affected how the team was set up… I just felt like I was — not on the back foot — but definitely a few things... It wasn’t as plain sailing as the year before. The whole season there were little setbacks along the way.”
This year — leaving aside the small matter of a global pandemic and near-complete lack of racing (which has clearly been the same for everyone) — Thomas should be able to look forward to a smooth run-in to the race. What he might find harder though is the layout of this year’s race, which is similar to 2019 — turned up to 11: there are more early mountains (a summit finish on stage four and then two more mountains stages in the first 10 days), and fewer time trial kilometres (no TTT, where Ineos always excel, and just a single time trial up Planche des Belles Filles on the penultimate day).
A power to weight parcours
For a power rider whose focus was the northern Classics not so long ago, such a climbing-centric race could be seen has less than ideal, though let’s not forget, the Welshman did win on Alpe d’huez two years ago.
Thomas seems unconcerned, and says he won’t be training any differently in any case: “Trainingwise it’s similar to normal. Obviously, you want your threshold as good as it can be, and you want to be at optimum weight.”
Photos from the spring show Thomas looking leaned out and in great shape, but he insists it’s not for the benefit of the Tour mountains:
“Maybe it was just a good angle. I’m definitely not in bad shape, but I’ve still got a little bit to go,” he says. “I don’t think I’ll be any lighter than normal. I think that’s my optimal weight really, around 68 [kg] — I’ve learned that in the past.
“The big difference in training,” he adds, “is the fact that we’ve been training all year and not been racing, that’ll be the biggest difference with it all.”
And he predicts some interesting performances because of that: “It could be that you get a lot of guys that are superpunchy and really aggressive early on. But then by the time it comes to that final week, there could be quite a few guys blowing up a bit, and people just hanging on. I think it’ll be interesting and exciting to watch, that’s for sure.”
“You could get lots of punchy guys early on. It’ll be exciting to watch”
Blinkered
When it comes to Froome (when we spoke Froome’s departure was still just a rumour) Thomas reiterates what he has said before: “I just don’t read any of that sort of stuff. It’s easy to say but it genuinely is the truth. Like I said, you know, I’m busy enough now when I come back with a little boy.
“Obviously I hear about it because people see stuff and ask me about it. But like I say, I just stick in my own little bubble and just worry about being as fit as I can be.”
Neither is he worried about the threat of Covid-19 when it comes to racing, saying he is happy to trust governments and team protocols if the races are deemed safe to go ahead: “I think just follow them as best you can… and then get on with,” he says matter of factly.
It’s a neat demonstration of his single-mindedness. And very soon — in about a week’s time, in fact — he’ll have the chance to put that focus, that fitness, and that newly-remembered love of bike racing to good use.