{"id":238595,"date":"2025-07-04T23:01:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T23:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/238595\/"},"modified":"2025-07-04T23:01:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T23:01:11","slug":"a-bit-nervous-not-sure-what-to-expect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/238595\/","title":{"rendered":"A bit nervous, not sure what to expect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An icon of the modern peloton, former Maillot Jaune winner <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/geraint-thomas\" title=\"Geraint Thomas\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Geraint Thomas<\/a> embarks on the final <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/tour-de-france\" title=\"Tour de France\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tour de France<\/a> of his career this weekend. Understandably, the emotions were high for the <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/ineos-grenadiers\" title=\"INEOS Grenadiers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">INEOS Grenadiers<\/a> star at the team presentation on Thursday.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tntsports.co.uk\/cycling\/tour-de-france\/2025\/geraint-thomas-says-he-is-nervous-and-apprehensive_sto23198318\/story.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">In conversation with TNT Sports<\/a> in Lille, the 39-year-old Welshman was asked to weigh up how he is feeling ahead of his last ever Tour de France appearance. &#8220;I&#8217;m a bit apprehensive,&#8221; admitted Thomas somewhat uncharacteristically for a rider so well known for taking things as they come and brushing off any disappointments. &#8220;I feel a bit like 2007 again (his first Tour de France ed.), just a bit nervous, not sure what to quite expect.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>This race has long been earmarked as a key point in Thomas&#8217; retirement tour in 2025, but after crashing out of the Tour de Suisse last month with a knee injury, things momentarily looked in doubt. Thankfully however, the 2018 Tour de France winner has been able to recover in time for a send-off at the biggest race on the cycling calendar.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I feel like I&#8217;ve worked hard to be in decent shape. Obviously it would have been nice to have completed Swiss [Tour de Suisse] and got that in the legs,&#8221; he says of his condition heading into the Tour. &#8220;I&#8217;m really looking forward to it. Hopefully, we&#8217;re going to have a good race for myself and the team.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>When asked what advice he would give to his younger self starting out at the Tour de France for Barloworld back in 2007, Thomas smiles thoughtfully, before responding: &#8220;Just enjoy it, soak it all up, because it goes super quick. Everyone tells you that when you are young; time flies, make the most of it.\u00a0So just get stuck in, enjoy it, take from it what you can.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An icon of the modern peloton, former Maillot Jaune winner Geraint Thomas embarks on the final Tour de&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-238595","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114797457149879694","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}