Thomas's 10 Tours

Defending Tour de France champion Geraint Thomas recalls his long journey to reach the Champs-Elysées in the fabled yellow jersey, highlighting the ups and downs that led to the greatest success of his career

- Pete Cossins

2007

My debut in the race with Barloworld. It’s quite a few years back now but I’ll never forget it. Obviously, the highlights were the start in London, where the atmosphere was amazing, and finishing in Paris, because I just didn’t expect to get there. Everything in between was just suffering. Every day was a fight just to finish each stage within the time limit.

There were a lot of really tough days. On one, I was out of the back on my own for 100 kilometres, just chasing to get back to the gruppetto. Another day, Astana put everyone in the gutter on the flat just before we went into a feed zone and I went straight out of the back in a group of five or six. I was swinging all day. It was a big fight for the whole race, thinking each day when the speed went up that this day might be my last.

I learned a lot about myself physically, but also from the more experienced riders on the team around me, guys like Robbie Hunter, who I shared a room with. I knew I could get better and felt that I could ride the Tour. At that point, though, any thoughts of winning the race were just a million miles away.

Position: 139th (out of 140 finishers), 3:46.51 down on Alberto Contador

2010

In 2009 I crashed in Tirreno and broke my pelvis so that wiped out most of that year really, including any chance of racing the Tour. I came back pretty well towards the end of the season and, of course, at that point the whole Sky thing was kicking off, which was a real boost. I was picked for the team to ride the 2010 Tour, when we were all expecting big things of Brad [Wiggins]. It was disappointing for the whole team when he didn’t go as well as we expected.