Geraint Thomas: Britain’s Most Complete Cyclist?
To celebrate the start of this year’s Tour de France, we’re launching something special.
An artist-signed, numbered fine art print of Geraint Thomas – immortalised on the Champs-Élysées, Tour de France winner, trailing the Welsh flag behind him. A moment of glory, twenty years in the making.
As a Handmade Cyclist first, the edition size will be defined by the fans. The print will be available to order for the duration of the Tour – from Saturday 5 July to Sunday 27 July. After that, the edition is closed forever.
A one-time tribute to Wales’ finest.
The road to yellow
From the boards of the velodrome to the yellow jersey of Paris, Thomas’s journey has been one of reinvention. A track specialist in his early years, he took gold at the Olympics and Worlds, and was a mainstay of British Cycling’s pursuit dominance. His road career, from stagiaire in 2005 to team leader at Ineos Grenadiers, tells the story of a rider who could – and did – do it all.
Most famously, the 2018 Tour de France, including a stage win atop l'Alpe d'Huez that had even Thomas himself almost speechless in disbelief. That same year he won the Critérium du Dauphiné. He’d already won Paris–Nice in 2016. And even in the final seasons of his career, he was back on the podium at the Tour in 2022 and a heartbreaking, last day drop from pink to second in the Giro in 2042 – long after most had written him off.
The classics engine
G wasn’t just a stage racer who could hang on in the mountains. He was strong enough, smart enough and stubborn enough to win the hardest one-day races in the sport.
E3 Harelbeke, 2015. Thomas broke away solo, held off the chasing pack, and crossed the line alone. There’s a good case to be made that if he’d ever fully dedicated himself to the spring campaign, he’d have a Monument on the mantelpiece. I wonder if he feels that there was a Flanders or Roubaix in those legs, and that perhaps had he foregone the monk-like life of the GC specialist for a year or two he’d have a cobblestone to counterweigh the Tour’s Coupe Omnisports. But I suspect Thomas is not one to look back with regrets. Often the loyal domestique, rarely the moaner. He’d do the work no one else wanted to do – and win the race when given the chance.
Wales on his back
G’s wins mattered. But so did who he was doing it for.
The Commonwealth Games road race in 2014 perhaps mattered more to him than most. Crap weather, a solo break, and gold for Wales. A decade after turning pro, G was still proud to pull on the red jersey and deliver for the dragon.
Perhaps the most complete British rider ever?
Simpson was the original. A Monument winner, our first world road race champion. A Tour de France yellow jersey wearer who could mix it with the best.
But since then? Has any British rider been so versatile? Perhaps Patrick Lefevere summed it up best. Famously forthright and not one to indulge prima donnas, lightweights or just about anyone who doesn’t fit the mould of hard-bastard Flandrian, Lefevere once suggested that if there was one rider in the peloton he wished he could sign, it was Thomas – capable of battering to classic wins in the sleet, or cresting an alp in the heat, and because "he can ride on the front at 50kph, dragging the whole peloton behind him."
A final tribute, 20 years on
This new Handmade Cyclist print celebrates G at his crowning moment – the Tour de France winner on the Champs-Élysées, bathed in gold, the Welsh flag flying behind.
The edition will be artist-signed and numbered.
It launches Saturday 5 July, and closes Sunday 27 July.
Once the Tour ends, that’s it. No second chances.
Twenty years a pro. One chance to own the print.