Cyclist
Is Geraint Thomas is the best rider from the Team Sky generation?
Geraint Thomas confirmed this morning that he will bow out from the pro peloton at the end of the 2025 season. Hoping to compete in one final Tour de France before retiring, Thomas will soon conclude an almost 20-year-long career in which the Welshman won the 2018 Tour de France as well as the E3 classic, the Critérium du Dauphiné, Tour de Suisse, Tour de Romandie and Paris-Nice.
On top of that, the Ineos rider is one of only two cyclists in the sport’s history to have won the Tour de France, an Olympic gold, a Commonwealth and a world title in their career – the other being Bradley Wiggins. Often in the shadow of Wiggins, along with four-time Tour winner Chris Froome and 2019 Tour winner Egan Bernal, Thomas hasn’t always been given the credit he was due during his 15-year stint at Team Sky/Ineos Grenadiers.
Having won Classics, stage races, Grand Tour time-trials and mountaintop finishes, Thomas carved a name for himself as one of the most versatile in the world. On top of that, he remains the last British rider to win the Tour de France, and he’s still the most recent Brit to reach the podium of a Grand Tour.
With his retirement official, let’s weigh up Thomas’s achievements (so far, we should add – who knows what the rest of this year will bring?) and evaluate whether he is the best rider to come out of the once-feared ‘Team Sky train’ (sorry Mark Cavendish, you escape our grasp). We’ll pit his accomplishments against those of Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome to deduce whether Thomas deserves to be crowned as the king of the Team Sky generation.
A man of many talents
When Geraint Thomas stepped up to the pro peloton in the mid-2000s, many expected him to grow into a rouleur – the typical rider type of the few British riders of the time. Given his track background, it was an understandable conclusion and his early results suggested it was an appropriate one, with strong results in time-trials and one-day races during his formative years at the top level.
Logically, Thomas evolved into a capable Classics rider, and he was Team Sky’s Classics leader for a while, securing top tens at the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix during the first half of the 2010s. In 2015, he pushed these boundaries by claiming an overall win at the Volta ao Algarve – a race won in recent years by Tadej Pogačar and Remco Evenepoel – a runners-up spot at the mountainous Tour de Suisse and a resounding victory at Tour of Flanders warm-up E3 ahead of well-established one-day names. Three very different races, but three convincing results nonetheless.
In stage races, Thomas’s palmarès is one of the most eclectic amongst the GC heavyweights of the 2010s and early 2020s. He has a wide array of European victories to his name, from the now-disbanded Bayern Rundfahrt to the pre-Giro showdown the Tour of the Alps. More notably though, he boasts a WorldTour sweep of Paris-Nice, the Tour de Romandie, the Tour de Suisse and the Critérium du Dauphiné.
Given that these titles were claimed over the span of a decade, and crucially one that took in both the Froome and Pogačar eras, Thomas might have the most diverse list of accomplishments of the lot at Team Sky.
Froome never won Paris-Nice and Wiggins never finished the Tour de Suisse while on Sky’s payroll. Although the 2012 Tour champion may have targeted the Classics towards the twilight of his career, no other Team Sky GC contender ever came close to winning a major cobbled race in the way Thomas did. For that, the Welshman deserves additional kudos.
The Midas touch
Unlike Froome and Bernal, Thomas has been an Olympic champion. As part of Britain’s team pursuit lineup during its golden age, the Welshman bagged two Olympic golds, three world titles and a European Championship during his 20s – another rather impressive string to his bow.
After transitioning to the road full-time, he also claimed a Commonwealth title on the road in 2014. Adding national titles on the road to this heavy haul of gold medals, Thomas swept up titles on all international levels on offer.
In terms of a cycling bucket list, winning Olympic gold, a rainbow jersey and a Tour de France title would be enough for anyone to be heralded as a legend of the sport. Given that these achievements were done across two disciplines, requiring different training programmes and physiological demands, it’s all the more impressive.
Shelf life
Now in his late 30s, Thomas has been a remarkably long-lasting figure at the top level of pro cycling, outlasting many of his rivals. The same cannot be said for some of his counterparts from Team Sky.
Fighting back from countless crashes – including the broken pelvis he nursed through the 2013 Tour – Thomas has remained capable of sticking with the best. Even in the past couple of years he has continued to be capable of fighting for Grand Tour glory, with three podiums in the past three years. And he was just 16 seconds from winning the 2023 Giro d’Italia, only losing the race lead on the final day.
His longevity is astounding in itself, especially when compared to his rivals. After the Covid-enforced break in 2020, a number of pre-pandemic GC leaders struggled to keep up with the younger stars breaking through. The likes of Vincenzo Nibali, Froome, Steven Kruijswijk, Thibaut Pinot and Rigoberto Urán all failed to reclaim their former glory and never found their way back to a Grand Tour podium post-Covid.
Thomas is one of just two riders over 35 to have made the podium of a Grand Tour both pre- and post-pandemic, the other being Primož Roglič, who came to the sport relatively late. At this point, Thomas is also the only rider in the sport’s history to share a Grand Tour podium with both Pogačar and Froome over the course of his career.
Looking back
Reflecting on his 20-year career in the pro peloton, there’s plenty for Geraint Thomas to be proud of.
Yes, he didn’t claim the four Tour titles Froome did, but the 38-year-old has the most impressive and rounded palmarès among the Sky generation. As such, he’s probably the best rider to come from that exclusive camp, having won on the track, on the cobbles and on the sport’s biggest stage, the Tour de France.
And where his fellow stars of the 2010s faded after the pandemic, Thomas hung on and resumed his quest for glory at Grand Tours and week-long stage races, even adding two major WorldTour wins to his name in the 2020s at the Critérium du Dauphiné and the Tour de Suisse. While Froome was struggling to get picked for WorldTour races at Israel-Premier Tech, Thomas was able to maintain his status among the world’s best, allowing him to bow out of the sport at something approaching the top.
Thomas is undoubtedly the longest-lasting star from the Team Sky generation and, as the final representative of British cycling’s golden age at the sport’s top level, his retirement truly marks the end of an era.
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