{"id":405638,"date":"2025-09-07T16:16:23","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T16:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/405638\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T16:16:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T16:16:23","slug":"tour-of-britain-romain-gregoire-wins-as-geraint-thomas-races-for-final-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/405638\/","title":{"rendered":"Tour of Britain: Romain Gregoire wins as Geraint Thomas races for final time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The race marked the end of Thomas&#8217; astonishing career.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 2018 Tour de France champion finished the stage in 62nd position as he rode what became a lap of honour through his hometown.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The final stage began at the velodrome named after the 39-year-old in Newport and went past his childhood cycling club, Maindy Flyers, before ending in Cardiff.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Thomas, who won track gold at two Olympics as well as road race gold at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, is widely regarded as one of the greatest Welsh sportsmen of all time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I was emotional crossing the line, I was almost like choking up riding my bike,&#8221; said Thomas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s definitely emotional to finish here and it is just unbelievable really, it is a full circle moment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Thomas previously said he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/cycling\/articles\/cn0r7gxg95go\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">held discussions over staying on at Team Ineos<\/a> following his retirement, but that was the last thing on his mind after the race.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I have got to take the little one to school on Tuesday and then I have my brother&#8217;s stag do in Portugal,&#8221; joked Thomas when asked about what was next.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;A little bit of normality,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The race marked the end of Thomas&#8217; astonishing career. The 2018 Tour de France champion finished the stage&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-405638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115163914948741560","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405638","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=405638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}