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Editorial PARÌS

AFP

Geraint Thomas, winner of the Tour de France, is above all Welsh. And he is proud to be. Without words aloud, without explosive statements, always a gentleman in his sentences, he held the throne of his colleague Chris Froome.

Geraint was one of the knights of King Arthur's round table. And Thomas decided to leave anonymity between the Praetorian Froome Guard in the Sky Team.

Without being very common, Geraint became a name used among the Welsh population.

But his complicated pronunciation and unusual is that his fellow cyclists have known him under the nickname "G".

The cyclist, 32 years old, is a quiet man, who lives by bike, but who has other concerns. In good Welsh, he does not miss any matches of his national team at the Six Nations Rugby Tournament.

Thomas has managed to become one of the best Welsh athletes of all time, with over 30 years. Time, at the height of footballer Gareth Bale.

Nicolas Portal, his sports director at Sky, notes that it may seem cold, proud or shy, but that does not know him well.

When he was nine, he wanted But there was only one bike lane around a football field in the suburbs of Maindy in Cardiff, that almost no one was there. ; used.

It had been built for the Commonwealth Games in 1958, but even in the 1990s, many people in the area thought it was only for soccer balls not to go very far .

One of the few people who used this bike path was Debbie Wharton, who decided to create a club. Cycling, the Maindy Flyers Club Cycling Youth

And the parents of Geraint Thomas have decided to register.

Only 21 years old, in 2007, he was world champion team pursuit, with the British team, a title that he renewed in 2008 and 2012, being also a gold medalist Olympic Games in the same discipline in Beijing-2008 and London-2012.
After his second Olympic gold medal, he leaves the track a bit and finally embarks on the road

until this consecration. The Tour de France accumulated unsuccessful successes by winning the Bavarian Tour (2014), the Tour de l'Algarve (2015 and 2016), Paris-Nice (2016), the Tour des Alpes (2017) and a stage of the Tour de France (2017)

And this year, before the Tour de France, he was already warning against his chances, by imposing himself on the Critérium du Dauphiné.