Geraint Thomas had already changed into casual kit as teammates stripped off their lycra and doused themselves with water at the end of a sweltering Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race on Sunday.
The one-day event in Geelong marked the end of a five-week trip to Australia for the highly decorated Welshman, who has struggled with illness since the beginning of the Tour Down Under earlier this month.
“This has definitely been a good block of training, obviously wasn’t ideal feeling a bit crook going into Down Under,” he told Cyclingnews after a DNF at the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race.
“I had a dodgy stomach and a bit of a fever the night before, so suffered around a few days there. Today didn’t feel good. I was just a bit blocked. The racing hasn’t necessarily been what I’d hoped for, but still been working hard, still got out of it what I wanted.”
Thomas used to be a staple of the so-called Aussie summer of cycling, however, the trip became less frequent as he morphed from an Olympic tracker racer, to Classics rider and super domestique, to a race leader and Grand Tour winner. The 10th excursion of his career here you could argue was as much sentimental as it was practical. The 2025 season is set to be Thomas’ swansong, with the 38-year-old expected to confirm his impending retirement on his own podcast in the coming weeks.
“Just love coming down here,” he said of his return.
“We’re here three weeks before Down Under, just good, consistent training. You can come with the family and have a bit of a life off the bike as well.
“It’s just – I knew I was going to be – but I was just a bit further behind everyone else. That’s kind of how I’ve done it the last few years. So, get back to Monaco now, head into the bunker, as I call it, and full regime for a bit. I’ll be feeling a lot better then.”
Thomas finished third overall at the Giro d’Italia last season behind Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) and Daniel Martinez (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) before lining up at the Tour de France, where teammate Carlos Rodriguez placed seventh. However, he’s ruled out a return to the Italian Grand Tour, focused instead on one last lap around France, and then the Tour of Britain.
“I’d love to go back to the Giro but having done the Tour last year it’s just another level. You forget what it’s like. It’s the biggest bike race in the world, so I think it’s good to go there,” he said.
The 2018 Tour champion has no unfinished business at the race in which he has assisted Chris Froome to four titles, won a stage and in 2019 finished second to teammate Egan Bernal. He won’t be a leader this season, and concedes that took some convincing, but is aiming to be competitive.
“No, not for GC. Try and go in the best shape I can but mainly look for stages and be there for Carlos [Rodriguez], or whoever is going to be going for GC,” he said.
“I did struggle with the thought of just going, just going for a stage kind of belittles it, but having ridden GC in the Giro, and won the Tour, and all that type of stuff, then I think in November/December it did take me a while to really get going, but now having been here, I’ve definitely got that drive back to keep performing.
“I don’t want to have a year of slowly fizzling out. And you enjoy racing when you’re right in the thick of it, so that’s the plan.”
The Ineos Grenadiers team has changed greatly since Thomas first joined the original iteration of it, Team Sky in 2010, becoming part of a dynasty that set the benchmark in Grand Tours for almost a decade. However, in Australia he had more than one OG, competing alongside Ben Swift, and looking to former race roommate turned sports director Ian Stannard for instruction.
“It is strange because it’s the first time I’ve had him as a first DS but he’s really good,” he said of Stannard.
“We’re on the same wavelength anyway but if there is a bit of a difference it’s easy to talk to each other and say what we think and that’s great. I’ve got a lot of respect for him and the way he’s run this camp has been really good.”
