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For once, Geraint Thomas enjoyed the ride. He talked about how much he suffered at Alpe d'Huez, how he dug in his deepest reserves to hang on to Aubisque, but on Sunday, the pain disappeared. and the champagne sank as he jumped to Paris to retrieve the yellow jersey. He is the third Briton to win the Tour de France and the first of Wales, and he proudly held the red dragon over his head as he absorbed the moment. It will be difficult to finish.
Team Sky sits together, eyeglbades, smiling and laughing for the cameras. Maybe there was some relief in there: it was a test ride, going on roadside abuse and a halfway leadership change that took place. sowed doubt. "Was Thomas able to stay three weeks on the front line of a big tour?" The answer was categorical.
He finished with a nearly two-minute advantage over closest rival Tom Dumoulin in a consistent performance. The Dutch spent short periods on seven separate stages, resisting a series of attacks in the mountains before avenging his own badaults. He got 33 bonus seconds over the Dumoulin 12 and Froome, a mark of his opportunism, and won two spectacular stage wins in the Alps.
He always insisted that he was not thinking of victory. warning Saturday night that the last day in Paris is "always hard". But it was surely the easiest step of the lot: 116 km of procession more than the competition, neutralized by a traditional truce, from the Parisian suburb of Houilles to the Champs-Élysées.
There, the Norwegian Alexander Kristoff won a mbadive sprint, retaining Jon Degenkolb and the local favorite Arnaud Démare. It was Kristoff's first victory on the Tour, justifying his selection by Emirates United Arab Emirates who collected their second leg of the Tour after the team's leader, Irishman Dan Martin, won the sixth stage at Mûr-de-Bretagne
line a moment later with a punch of the air. For years he had arrived in Paris as another servant on the Sky train, having served Froome or Bradley Wiggins, and there was no doubt that he had won his time wearing yellow
" I do not have good speeches so I will stay brief, "said Thomas on the podium. "I just want to say thank you to the team, they were just amazing for the whole three weeks, great respect for Froomey, obviously it could have been awkward, there might have been tension, but you were a great champion and I will always respect you
"I'm pretty tired. The whole team was amazing, the staff too. I started riding a bike because of this race. I remember having run home from school to watch him. The dream was always just to be part of it. Now I am here in the yellow jersey, it's just crazy. I just want to say one last thanks to the crowd, you just have to be amazing. Oh, and my wife.
"Children, just dream big If people tell you that it can not be done, go on and believe in yourself, with hard work, everything ends up paying, thank you very much and long live the Tour." [19659004] Which suite for Thomas? "We will have a party tonight and it will probably last two weeks," he said Sunday morning. "Maybe even a month." It would not be the best preparation for the Vuelta a Espana, which begins in late August, but there is every chance that he will lead the team in Spain. He will be the winner of the Tour de France, having crushed his opposition for three difficult weeks until Paris
Which sequel for Froome? The 33-year-old man goes straight home to be with his wife, who must give birth to their second child any day now. He ran four big rounds successively, winning three and finishing third, and he will now rest. He says he's still hungry to add to his six-lap collection, but his position at the top of the best squad's team is no longer as badured.
For Team Sky, it's a sixth win in seven years Bradley Wiggins became the first Briton to win the Tour in 2012. They have won the last four major tours, now have two winners of the Tour de France and, at the talented young Colombian Egan Bernal, they already have the man of Sir Dave Brailsford think it will be the long-term successor of Froome
How to beat Team Sky remains the biggest question around cycling. The race organizers have been trying to refine the race, throwing curved balls as the intense stage 17 of 65km with a grid start in an effort to rid Sky of their strength in numbers. But their dominance shows no signs of slowing down, and for the moment there is not a team or runner that seems strong enough to usurp them. Thomas's win was a surprise given that Froome came to France as the team's leader, but that's another sign of their strength that even when the four-time champion failed, the Team does not have. Hard work, pbading from an Olympic champion on track to a stage runner on the road, winning Paris-Nice in 2016 and Dauphiné in June, still a strength indicator in July. He has now conquered the mountains of the Tour de France, reaching the pinnacle of sport at the age of 32. The champagne had a sweet taste. The party will be long.
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