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Geraint Thomas arrives in Lille today to start his final Tour de Francehaving survived a last minute scare after crashing and injuring his left knee during the Tour of Switzerland.
Although there was significant speculation over how badly injured he was, the 39-year-old has now recovered in time to start the 2025 Tour and joins Ineos Grenadiers team-mates, Carlos Rodriguez and Filippo Ganna, at the forefront of the British outfit.
Just over two weeks ago, Thomas fell awkwardly on a tight bend and although he carried on to finish the third stage, withdrew from the Swiss race as a “precautionary measure.”
“It was my fault,” he said afterwards, “I just kind of got my foot caught behind me and twisted all my knee and my hamstring – it was just a dead leg.”
Alarm bells rang when the 2018 Tour winner also missed last weekend’s British national championships, but he will be on the start line for the Grand Depart in Lille on Saturday.
Although he is expected to finally hang up his wheels at the end of this year’s Tour of Britain, his valedictory appearance in the Tour brings to an end a career that has spanned almost two decades, and that saw multiple Grand Tour wins from British male riders ever since Chris Froome won the Vuelta a Espana in 2011.
A dwindling influence
Thomas’s emphatic Tour win in 2018 is widely regarded as the peak of the Team Sky years.
This year, while there is a British presence dotted throughout the peloton, there are several high-profile absentees.
There will be no record-breaking Tour stage winner, Mark Cavendish, now retired, no multiple Grand Tour winner, Chris Froome, not selected, and no past Giro champion, Tao Geoghegan Hartsuffering with ongoing health issues. On the upside, the highly-rated young talent, Joe Blackmore, is making his Tour debut.
There are of course, the Yates twins, but they will be riding for their respective leaders: Simon for past Tour winner, Jonas Vingegaard and brother Adam, for all-conquering defending champion, Tadej Pogacar.
Both however, do have the pedigree to finish on the podium, if circumstances allow – and the stars align.
While Thomas has won his fight for fitness, it’s been confirmed that Geoghegan Hart has lost his and the Lidl-Trek rider will again miss the Tour de France this year. The rider announced the news himself, after revealing that the health struggles that have prevented him from return to his old form, are continuing.
Rumors that the 30 year old might not make Lidl-Trek’s Tour team first began several weeks ago, as he continued to battle to reach his past level.
‘Tricky to bring the pieces of the puzzle together’
The Londoner, winner of the 2020 Giro d’Italia, made yet another bid to reboot his stop/start 2025 season at the Tour of Switzerland, but fell ill midway through the mountainous stage race. He eventually finished 25th overall.
“I got sick with a mild chest infection and felt progressively more lousy toward the end of the week,” he said on Instagram, a few days ago, “even just to finish the race.”
The almost forgotten Grand Tour winner had shown signs of a recent resurgence, with third overall in June’s Tour of Slovenia. But he subsequently confirmed that he will again miss out on the Tour de France, a race he has only ridden once, in 2021, when he finished an anonymous 60th.
“At times, the body feels like it’s coming back to some semblance of my prior level,” Geoghegan Hart added. “I’m definitely seeing glimpses of that, but it’s proving quite tricky to bring all the pieces of the puzzle together at once.”
The 2020 Giro champion has said that he’s now looking for some consistent training before resuming racing in August. But unless he is well enough to start the Vuelta a Espana on August 23, it will be a season without a Grand Tour start.
Now 30, Geoghegan Hart has been blighted by illness and injury since moving to the Lidl-Trek team at the start of 2024. Even before that, in 2023, while still with Ineos Grenadiers, he fractured his leg after crashing on a descent racing in the Giro d’Italia, shortly after showing a return to his best form by winning the Tour of the Alps.
More frustrations
“I was 100% sure I was going to fight for the GC in that Grand Tour,” he said after his lengthy recovery. He is probably right: he was third overall and in great shape when the crash happened.
Yet, since then he has faced even more health obstacles.
In that sense, despite initial high hopes, his move to Lidl-Trek has yet to get off the ground. There has been much talk, since the beginning of the season of taking 2025, “race by race,” but that’s been tough too, given that his staccato programme has been punctuated by problems.
Sources within his team were reluctant to talk in detail about the nature of Geoghegan Hart’s problems, but with Thomas the only British Tour de France winner starting in Lille, it’s clear that the once dominant nation has now slipped into the shadows.