G FORCE

Cyclist Geraint Thomas discusses his incredible transformation from powerful indoor track champion to ultra-endurance Tour de France winner - featuring brutal training days, cutting-edge sports science and finding comfort in discomfort

- Mark Bailey

In the electrifying final of the team pursuit at London 2012 – ten years ago this summer – Geraint Thomas and his track cycling teammates raced around the indoor velodrome at speeds of over 60kph, covering 4km in a world-record time of 3 minutes and 51.659 seconds, to claim a memorable gold medal. The explosive event – in which teams of four pedal in synchronicity just inches from each other’s wheels – saw Thomas unleash a brutal display of power in a short but excruciatingly intense effort. The intensity of the action is so high that riders’ brains become starved of oxygen and black dots drift in front of their eyes.

Just six years later, Thomas was excelling in a very different event. At the 2018 Tour de France – the famously gruelling three-week endurance race over the French Alps – Thomas pedalled 3,351km (the equivalent of cycling from London to Tbilisi in Georgia); completed halfa-million pedal revolutions; torched 125,000 calories (an energy expenditure so great he’d need to eat 416 McDonald’s cheeseburgers to replace it); and climbed 50,000m, the equivalent of cycling from sea level to the summit of Mount Everest five-and-a-half times. After 21 days of pain and suffering, Thomas became the first ever Welshman to win the race.

Extraordinary evolution To casual observers, this transition might seem natural enough – and certainly Thomas’ track training gave him great speed, power and technique. But sports scientists know that what Thomas achieved was seriously impressive: switching from track to road is a bit like an 800m runner evolving into an ultramarathon champion.