"A great teammate, a great leader and a wonderful person" - INEOS Grenadiers pay tribute to Geraint Thomas after retirement announcement
Cycling
After much speculation, Geraint Thomas made it officially official earlier this week, that at the end of the 2025 season, the Welsh INEOS Grenadiers leader will be retiring from professional cycling. A long-time servant of the British based team, tributes have since been pouring in from Thomas' teammates.
"He's a great teammate, a great leader and a wonderful person - always with a great sense of humour," commented fellow former Tour de France winner Egan Bernal ahead of the Clásica Jaén on Monday. "I have vivid memories of racing two Tours with him, the one in which he won and then the one I won the following year and he got second. I just wish him all the best for the rest of his career and for everything else, too."
Michal Kwiatkowski has got to know Thomas well over their many years together at INEOS and the pair have become good friends in the process. "I'm just happy that I was part of it for the few years we raced together. I have great memories, victories, training camps with him - it was great to have G there alongside me. He's had a great career, and it'll be nice to finish off this last year together in some races," the Polish former world champion told Cycling News. "We've already done the Tour Down Under together, we had some fun down there already and it'll be good to do some more races between now and the end of the year."
Although incredibly successful over the years, Thomas has also been the victim of many a bad crash or bit of bad luck. As such, Kwiatkowski believes the Welshman deserves a lot of praise for his perseverance through adversity. "It's impressive - looking at him, he goes through very bad moments, but he always bounces back. So I know how hard he works, he always reached the top again. It's not easy at his age, it would have been easier if he was 25, of course, but he's not and he's still got it. He still got back on top again," explains 'Kwiato'. "He's a tough man, very robust. I will remember him as being unbreakable."
Just in
Play for FREE! Fantasy Tour of Flanders
Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter today!
Popular news
Latest comments
- You are completely wrongvappaxbipmv05-04-2025
- Tadej has a little more chance. It will be an exciting race and the most important thing is that no one gets hurt.
maria2024202405-04-2025 - Whatever happens tomorrow... it'll be a hell of a raceslappers6605-04-2025
- Exactly Tadej, the cancer of modern society. Full of good-for-nothing people who gain visibility and importance on social media mocking, humiliating (and worse things) to earn money. But it's the follower's fault, no followers, no "influencers".maria2024202405-04-2025
- Great commentCaralladas05-04-2025
- i’m such a sucker for those group-hug, happy ending moments between competitors, largely because it’s so WASN’T that way in my younger, stronger days. (on that note, i have this hope that somewhere down the road, maybe fifteen or twenty years, a middle aged wout and mathieu will go for a pleasure ride together in flanders, and reminisce about the days when they were the young, strong monsters that stalked the cobbles.)OCexile05-04-2025
- Just like Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Ronde van Vlaanderen was/is NOT on MAX. Get your facts straight.Ben04-04-2025
- You might bounce more for the same power, but not the same speed. Sending 20 kgs over a jump at 20 kph will fly just as far as 10 kgs at the same speed. Again, Galileo demonstrated this.acem8204-04-2025
- So, you're saying that doing a bunch of small hops on a bike is easier if you're heavier? Why do people buy lighter bikes, then? Why do they generally feel better and faster? An appeal to "rhythm" is not helpful either, as the right "rhythm" might be on the lighter or heavier side of things, and as it varies, it's likely a wash either way. Then we are left with the physics truth that it takes less power to lift lighter things than heavier things.acem8204-04-2025
- No, weight doesn't affect the ability to go into the wind at all. It's all CdA vs power at that point. For example, it's "obvious" that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter one. But, absent wind resistance, it's not true (Galileo demonstrated this). An appeal to "obviousness" doesn't matter when the physics is clear. And yes, you have to be able to hold everything else constant, or you can't determine anything! So, imagine a 300 watt rider at 80 kgs with a CdA of 2.0, then imagine that same rider at 70 kgs with a CdA of 2.0. (Assume ideal tire pressure for both, same bike.) Which one can ride over a bumpy road fastest? The lighter one, as he doesn't have to lift as much. That's also why when they test bikes on 5 star cobbled sectors, the MTB goes faster than even a cobble-build road bike. Even though rolling resistance is higher on a flat road, and the CdA is junk, it smooths out the cobbles, allowing the person to not lift as much as they otherwise would.acem8204-04-2025