Thomas' ride on time brings curtain down on glittering career

Laps of honour tend to be a gentle stroll around a field, not a six-day, 551-mile elite cycling race around the UK.

You might say Geraint Thomas knew what he was signing himself up to when he chose the life of a cyclist.

And besides, the Welsh and British public were not going to allow this sporting great to bring the curtain down on his illustrious career with a stealthy exit stage left.

No, the Tour of Britain was designed specifically to mark Thomas' retirement. Think This is Your Life but swap Michael Aspel, the big red book and a studio audience for thousands of fans lining the streets for a carefully crafted finally stage that finished in Thomas' home city of Cardiff.

Sunday's showpiece was a sweeping journey through a gallery of meaningful locations for the 39-year-old, starting at the Geraint Thomas Velodrome in Newport, rolling up and down the hills he climbed as a boy, before passing the house in Whitchurch where he grew up, the pub where we drank his first pint and the Maindy Flyers cycling club where he first rode a bike competitively.

"I was emotional crossing the line," Thomas said. "It was riding through Birchgrove and seeing all the fans, I was almost choking up riding my bike.

"Then I crossed the line with Swifty [team-mate Ben Swift], who I've raced with since we were 12. Then coming out to do the interviews, I couldn't even speak.

"It's definitely emotional, super special, though. To finish here is just unbelievable really, the support I've had over the years is incredible and to ride past Maindy, where it all started, no better way."

Thomas is usually a master of understatement, all deadpan humour and dry quips.

And given the physical toll of his job, the necessity to rest whenever he is not on his bike means that he often does not have the energy to be too animated a communicator.

Thomas won the Tour de France in 2018, after Olympic team pursuit golds on the track in 2008 and 2012

At the finish line on Sunday, conducting interviews while his five-year-old son Macs clutched his leg, he allowed his feelings to flow a little more freely.

"I wish I had tinted glasses, not the rain ones where you can still see my eyes," Thomas joked.

"That's what gets me every time, you know, seeing him [Macs] and Sa [wife Sara]. He's just well into it now and I never thought I'd still be going when he was at the age to really remember it.

"So that's really nice as well, that he can take it all in and then enjoy it and remember it."

Thomas' family have followed him all over the world, been there for some crushing lows as well as the soaring highs.

Having picked him up after crashing out of Grand Tours and nursed him through enough injuries to make a surgeon wince, wife Sara and the rest know better than anyone that these are the moments to savour.

From the start of the stage, through its windiest, wettest and coldest peaks on the Gwent hillsides, right through to its finish in Cardiff city centre, the sheer number of supporters out on the course was something to behold.

Thomas was blown away, almost rendered speechless. In his defence, though, how do you adequately summarise – in the immediate aftermath of a day's racing – that show of appreciation for a career which has spanned three decades and yielded two Olympic gold medals, three world titles, a Commonwealth gold, countless other race wins and cycling's greatest prize of all, the Tour de France?

You can't, not really, but the masses who lined streets and mountaintops from Suffolk to south Wales over the past week did a decent job of demonstrating what Thomas means to people.

And as passionate as they were – the cut-out Thomas facemasks were a highlight – they represented only a tiny cross-section of his following.

Thomas has been handed Welsh cakes by well-wishers at the Giro d'Italia, inspired road graffiti in the French countryside and counts the actor Ben Stiller among his celebrity fans.

Geraint Thomas with son Macs, acknowledges the Cardiff crowds, who came to bid farwell in his final competitive race

The most striking illustration of his support was his 2018 homecoming after winning the Tour, as thousands flocked to the Senedd and Cardiff Castle to salute this national hero.

It was that Tour triumph that catapulted Thomas to new heights. Like winning a World Cup, becoming Wimbledon champion or wearing the green jacket at golf's Masters, to be victorious at Le Tour is cycling's surest route to sporting immortality.

It was fitting, therefore, that Thomas' final act of all as a professional cyclist saw him return to Cardiff Castle.

He rode in alongside Macs, his niece Alys, nephew Jac and a group of young riders from Maindy.

At the castle, they were greeted by another crowd of thousands, all swilling happily from a complimentary can of beer specially brewed in Thomas' honour.

As a choir welcomed him on stage, with the earlier rain having dried away, sunshine glistened on the turrets.

After his 2018 coronation, this was a return to the castle befitting a king.

What a ride it's been.