Geraint Thomas, the Olympic star and Tour de France champion, will retire at the end of season

London, Feb 17 (AP) Geraint Thomas, the former Tour de France champion who also won gold medals in track cycling for Great Britain at the Olympic Games in 2008 and ’12, announced Monday that this will be his final year as a professional.

Thomas, a loyal teammate with a tremendous appetite for victory who transformed into a leader in his own right over his almost two-decade career, said he will focus on the Tour this summer with Ineos Grenadiers.

Aged 38, Thomas told the BBC that he will ride in support of the team’s ambitions and “maybe try to win a stage but just enjoy the race” that he won in 2018.

“Since I was a kid I dreamt of riding the Tour and being part of the Olympics and winning was obviously a dream as well, but to achieve that was just nuts,” he told BBC Breakfast.

“I think now the decision is official, you do start to reflect because when you’re in it, it’s just one thing after the next, year after year, so you don’t really appreciate it. I guess at the time you enjoy it but I don’t think you sit back and reflect and think, so there will be a bit of that this year.”

For a long time, Thomas had a reputation as a party boy, always up for a few pints of beer while watching a rugby match. But his longevity at the highest level speaks volumes about his dedication and balanced lifestyle.

“He is a true fighter,” said Dave Brailsford, the man who masterminded Britain’s successes at the Olympics and Tour de France.

Growing up on the outskirts of Cardiff, Wales, Thomas started bike racing at 10, and his exceptional qualities did not remain unnoticed for long.

“I first saw him when he was about 13 or 14 and he joined me at 17,” recalled Rod Ellingworth, the performance director at Team Sky when Thomas won the Tour, who also trained him as a British team coach.

“You could see straightaway he was just flying round the track, he was pretty good. As he joined the junior program, you just knew he was going to be pretty talented.”

Thomas’s first successes came on the track. In 2006, he was the youngest member of the British pursuit team that competed at the world championships. In 2008, he won the Olympic gold medal alongside Bradley Wiggins. Four years later in London, with a second gold medal secured in the same event, Thomas left track cycling to focus on road racing.

Thomas had already showed immense skills on the road from winning the Paris-Roubaix junior race in 2004. His initial ambitions on the road were to perform at one-day classics, then he rode the 2007 Tour.

Riding for the Barloworld team at the time, Thomas was the youngest cyclist to start that 2007 Tour when it began from London. Thomas, who is nicknamed “G? in the peloton, finished 140th, second to last. Three years later at the 2010 Tour he wore the white jersey for the best young rider for one stage.

Years later, his potential as a Grand Tour winner truly emerged when he won the week-long Paris-Nice in 2016. That victory ahead of two-time Tour de France winner Alberto Contador was a turning point.

But Thomas went through pain and injuries the next season, being forced to retire from the Tour and the Giro because of crashes. He still wore the yellow jersey at the Tour after winning the opening time trial but broke his collarbone in a downhill crash in the Alps.

In 2018, the year he won the Tour, Thomas started the race to help Chris Froome try and win for a record-equaling fifth time. But Froome crashed in the first stage and lost time, then cracked in the Pyrenees while Thomas’ tremendous form was rewarded with impressive wins in the Alps. He won back-to-back mountain stages and became the first British rider to win at the Alpe d’Huez.

“Beijing was massive, my first Olympics and winning gold there,” Thomas said. “But the Tour’s what changed my life, being recognised all over the place. The yellow jersey is iconic. You go anywhere in the world and people will know the yellow jersey, how it signifies cycling and its history. So to be a part of that history and to win it, I just pinch myself.”