Geraint Thomas admits feeling “broken” following the end of his legendary career

Geraint Thomas has had many career-defining days: Olympic gold in Beijing, Tour de France victory in Paris, the near miss at the Giro in 2019. But, perhaps none of those moments carried the weight of his farewell at the 2025 Tour of Britain. In Cardiff, the 39-year-old rolled across the line for the final time, the end of a 19-year professional career. He wasn’t at the front of the race anymore, neither has he been in the past two seasons. But his farewell in Cardiff was about more than winning. It was a chance for British cycling fans to say goodbye to one of the proudest sons.

Two days later, on his podcast Watts Occurring with Luke Rowe, Thomas gave the most candid account yet of what that moment truly felt like. “Yeah, I’m broken,” he admitted, when Rowe asked his former teammate if the waterworks began immediately.

It was not just the closing of a race but of a life defined by cycling. From his earliest laps at the Maindy track in Cardiff to world and Olympic titles on the velodrome, through to the yellow jersey in Paris, Thomas had always been marked by his longevity at the top. To sign off on home roads, in front of Welsh crowds, was a perfect ending to a legendary career.

The finale itself was chaotic. Thomas described the build-up to the start in Newport’s velodrome, where he was almost caught off guard. “I had kind of forgotten that I had to do a bike race, mate,” he laughed. “The whole peloton’s there then, holding the bikes up, you know, spinning the wheels. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s pretty sweet.’”

Even in his last kilometres, instinct kicked in. “I just went, and I saw the TV bike as well… didn’t happen. I was chasing him across the road,” he recalled. That brief surge left him drained. “If your life as a professional cyclist is a bag of sand, like we say, you know, and you’re constantly poking holes in it, and it’s you, mate, that was the last. Yeah, I was there just shaking the bag. There was nothing left in it…”

From there it became survival, clinging on as the pace split the field. “I suffered a lot then… I was in a box at that point.” Salvation came in unlikely form. “Saved by the cows ’cause there was a bit of a drag race into that corner,” Rowe chuckled, as a herd crossing the road briefly neutralised the race.

By the final run-in to Cardiff, the competitive element mattered less than the atmosphere. “Going through Birchgrove past the Birch, I was getting emotional and I just felt the lump in my throat,” Thomas admitted. “Uno-X guy came up and said like, ‘Oh, just want to say been an honour to do your last race with you.’ And that… I was like, ‘Oh, mate, don’t… don’t stop talking to me now.’”

The finish on the streets of Cardiff became the emotional release point. “I will never race my bike again,” he reflected. “I left Swifty till last because I knew I was probably going to crack, and then we’re hugging each other, both of us crying.”

With clear lenses rather than mirrored sunglasses, there was no hiding. “I had the rain-glasses lenses as well, you know, not the tinted mirrored ones, so everyone could still see my eyes. I was like, ‘Oh jeez.’”

Interviews proved almost impossible. “S4C interview, I haven’t seen it back yet, but, mate, I couldn’t speak,” he admitted. “Griff… was saying something really nice about his kids or Max, and I just said, ‘Oh, mate, just stop talking. Just shut up, ’cause you’re going to keep me going.’”

What made his farewell so powerful was of course its setting. Unlike many great champions who step away abroad, Thomas finished at home. Since the Tour of Britain announced the race would finish in Cardiff earlier this year, British cycling fans pencilled it in as a farewell Tour for Thomas. Crowds lined the roads, and the final celebrations took place at Cardiff Castle in front of 4,000 people. “4,000 tickets gone in an hour. Yeah, that’s mad, isn’t it?” he said on the podcast. “It was just unreal. It was so good.”

A lot of Thomas’ support comes from the fact he has a truly human feel to him, someone that despite his success and fame fans feel like they can relate to. That connection to his roots framed his career from the start. The Maindy Flyers club, whose riders led him into the castle, was where he first pedalled competitively. Now they were at his side again, for one last time.

If the castle celebration symbolised the public farewell, the podcast revealed what Thomas himself expects to miss most. “One thing I haven’t said is, you know, when you finish and you just sit down on your chair and you’re just like… and you go and have a shower… suddenly you just, like, relax.”

Rowe expanded on what that meant inside the sport. “It’s also a bit of the sense of, I don’t know, for use of another word, but, like togetherness… you’re in this little bubble of just that togetherness…”

He described the shared extremes: “Sometimes you can have a week or 10 days or two weeks racing and it’s just one bad day after another, and all you’ve got is each other… on the flip side, it could be 20 days of greatness…”

Thomas agreed: “That’s what I’ve been saying I’m going to miss the most… go and try and execute it, do it for each other.”

For a rider whose 16-year tenure with Team Sky/INEOS spanned the team’s most dominant era, that camaraderie was as central to his legacy as his victories. That, for Thomas, is what he will miss most.

No Thomas farewell would be complete without a party. Rowe and Thomas shared the unfiltered aftermath: pub singing, scrums in the street, and a punishing hangover. “We went to Tiny Rebel… class, singing the songs, like, so good…” Rowe recalled. “Anyone who wasn’t Welsh… would be like, what the hell… you don’t get 40 people in a circle just singing a song.”

Thomas admitted the morning after was grim. “Sunday night I was sick. It all came back up. Halfway up the stairs, I’m puking up into this bowl… I was a big one, you know.” Yet he still faced the cameras. “The next day, I’d arranged for BBC Wales to come over… I was like, ‘Oh, no. I should do really. They’ve come all this way.’ Managed to just do this interview… I had a few, like, these little burps, which luckily they took out of it.”

Even vaccines for an upcoming safari added to the misery. “I had this reaction to this vaccine then in the night, was itching. Had this rash, mate. Didn’t sleep.” So not the relaxing started to retirement so far!

Thomas’s emotions in Cardiff carried extra weight because of what came before. From double Olympic gold in the team pursuit to becoming only the third Briton to win the Tour de France, he built one of the most complete palmarès in British cycling. His breakthrough on the road came with a stint in the white jersey in the 2010 Tour, and his finest victorywas the 2018 Tour de France, where he saw off Chris Froome and Tom Dumoulin.

The breadth of his career spanned eras, riding his first Tour in 2007, long before the Sky era, and finishing nearly two decades later alongside the likes of Remco Evenepoel. That longevity explained why, as he put it, “As I keep saying, you know, just to finish when you want is one thing, but finishing there as well, with all that, is just another level again.”

In the end, Thomas was clear about what awaited him next. “Back to reality now, ain’t it? School drop-off and everything,” he said. “I had the school drop-off yesterday morning… I was like, I just can’t hold a conversation here… I’m not in a good way.”

For Rowe, who retired a year earlier, the adjustment was already familiar. “I love retirement. I’m sure you will as well, mate.” Thomas is already looking forward to “being around, being home more, a bit more relaxed, doing what you want, not so regimented… the grass is always greener.”

Cycling history will remember Thomas for his yellow jersey in Paris and Olympic golds, but British fans will remember him for the family feel he always gave off. In Cardiff, with family, friends, and fans crammed together under Welsh skies, that journey came full circle. “Probably the last couple of minutes of the race… yeah, the crowd, just mental,” he said. “Just crossing the line and just… yeah. It’s just a weird thought now though, isn’t it? Like, that’s it, I’m done!”