Biography

Introduced to the sport at the age of ten, with the legendary Maindy Flyers club in his home city of Cardiff, Thomas quickly showed his potential with national track successes and a silver medal in the points race at the 2004 UEC European Junior Track Cycling Championships in Valencia, Spain.

He repeated that silver on his debut for the senior Great Britain team in the scratch race at the Moscow round of the UCI Track World Cup in Moscow in November 2004 – the first of 13 World Cup medals he would win over the next eight years, including six golds in the team pursuit and one in an individual pursuit.

However, his promising career was jeopardised in February 2005 when a ride, while training with the Great Britain track team in Australia, ended in disaster and a crash which resulted in Thomas rupturing his spleen and undergoing major surgery.

Having recovered from that ordeal, Thomas continued to develop on the track and road, where he rode for domestic team Recycling.co.uk and spent the end of the 2006 season on a short-term “Stagiaire” contract with leading professional team Saunier Duval-Prodir.

By 2006, he had signed for Barloworld where he spent the next three years developing into the rider who would eventually contest general classification at Grand Tours.

His first full season actually saw him win a stage race, the Fleche du Sud, and make his debut at the “Baby Giro” – the ten-stage junior version of the Italian Grand Tour race. In the summer of 2007, Barloworld handed Thomas his debut at the Tour de France, where he was the youngest rider in the race, the first Welsh competitor since 1967 and finished 140th out of 141 riders.

A year later, his commitments in the Beijing Olympics meant Thomas missed the Tour, riding the early-season Giro d’Italia instead although his performances in the Olympics, where he was part of a team pursuit team with Wiggins, Ed Clancy and Paul Manning that twice broke the world record on its way to gold, meant it was still a year to remember.

His 2009 season was undermined by an early-season crash at the Tirreno-Adriatico in which he broke his pelvis and fractured his nose although the year ended with further track successes, including a world’s fastest time in the individual pursuit while winning gold in the Manchester UCI Track World Cup meeting.

The Sky’s the limit

Team Sky were certainly convinced of his abilities, signing him to a deal for 2010, the first of 12 seasons Thomas has spent with the British team to date.

After beating team-mate Pete Kennaugh to win the British National road race title, Thomas carried his strong form into the Tour de France, placing fifth on the prologue and second on stage three, results which left him leader of the young rider classification briefly.

The 2011 season opened with Thomas showing strong form in one-day Classics and winning his first professional title at the five stage Bayern-Rundfahrt race in Germany. At the Tour, Thomas finished 31st overall, won the points classification at the Tour of Britain and helped lead out team-mate Mark Cavendish for a memorable win in the UCI World Championship road race.

The 2012 season again revolved largely around the track, with Thomas joining Clancy, Kennaugh and Steven Burke to retain the team pursuit gold at London 2012 – breaking the world record twice in the process - although his early-season performances at the Giro d’Italia, and a prologue win in the Tour de Romandie again showed his development on the road.

Now focused solely on the road, Thomas was given a leadership role in the early-season Classics campaign, finishing fourth in two Belgian races, before he rode as a domestique in major stage races.

Having helped team-mates Chris Froome and Richie Porte finish first and second at the Criterium du Dauphine, a heavy crash saw Thomas fracture his pelvis on the first stage although, incredibly, he completed the Tour, eventually finishing 140th overall while helping Froome clinch overall victory.

Another strong Classics performance in 2014 and another overall victory at Bayern-Rundfahrt saw Thomas enter the Tour de France in support of Froome although his team-mate’s crash and withdrawal eventually allowed the Welshman to seek individual stage successes.

Thomas missed out on wins at that Tour but recorded his highest finish to date – 21st – and carried that form into the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow where, representing Wales, he won gold in the road race and a bronze in the time trial.

After winning the Volta ao Algarve stage race in February 2015, Thomas finally made his breakthrough in the Classics, becoming the first British winner of the E3 Harelbeke in Belgium.

Having shown fine form in the Tour de Suisse, finishing second overall, Thomas helped Froome win the 2015 Tour de France, holding fourth place overall himself before losing time on stage 19 and eventually finishing 15th.

However, he had shown his potential as a Grand Tour winner, a possibility underlined when he retained the Volta ao Algarve and won the prestigious Paris-Nice stage races at the start of 2016. Thomas ended the year helping Froome to another Tour de France victory – finishing 15th on general classification himself – before appearing at his third Olympic Games where he was in contention for gold in the road race before a late crash saw him eventually finish 11th.