Geraint Thomas says Chris Froome “stuck in 2010s” with “deluded” optimism for last win

Geraint Thomas has offered a blunt assessment of Chris Froome’s desire to end his career with a final stage win on the Tour de France, saying his former team mate at Ineos/Sky is a very long way off achieving that ambition.

While stressing he wanted to be polite to Froome, Thomas said the four-time Tour de France winner continuing to aim for a big performance on the Tour amounted to “deluded” optimism. He added Froome had failed to change with the times, with his nutrition and training, and that was now holding him back.

Thomas’s comments came at the end of his Geraint Thomas Cycling Club Podcast after he had interviewed Froome. During that conversation, Froome told the Welshman he was determined to keep going in the sport, and aiming high, despite his lack of results since returning from a life-threatening crash in 2019.

“It’s typical Froomey fashion, just never gives up, slightly deluded really… in as polite a way as you can say,” Thomas said of Froome’s expressed goal of taking a stage win, or getting much closer to the GC riders, at the Tour de France.

“But that’s just him, isn’t it? He’s a winner and he wants to win, although he’s quite far off that at the minute. But he’s working hard and that’s what he wants to do. We were in Best Buddies (a charity sportive in Miami) for a few days together and I heard that he was just training like a monster already.

“That’s the one thing with Froomey, maybe, which is probably holding him back a little bit. I think he’s kind of stuck in the 2010s almost, you know what I mean, like I think nutrition-wise and stuff, he’s still a bit more into that rather than the new age nutrition… I think he’s still quite old-school with that. But it would be nice to see him go out well.”

Froome had earlier told Thomas while he had won lots of races – including four Tours, the Vuelta and Giro – that because he had not re-found his form since his crash at the 2019 Dauphiné, his kids had never seen him challenging in big races.

He told Thomas – the Giro runner-up this year and now aged 37 years – he wanted to show his kids what he was really capable of. And that desire kept him motivated to continue racing with Israel Premier Tech, though he is now aged 38 years.

“A win in the Tour for me now would just be super special, or even being closer, sort of with the GC guys, that would be a pretty special way for me to finish off,” he said, also revealing during the interview he had not been in a wind tunnel for tests since he joined Israel Premier Tech.

“I’d like to do a lot more stage racing,” Froome said looking ahead to next season, when even making the Tour de France team will be a big challenge for him. “This year I did quite a lot of one-day racing building up to the Tour and I can comfortably admit I’m not a one-day rider.

“I want to get into a good stage race programme, blocks of training and racing maybe back to old-school a little bit – what I was always used to. It would just be magic to be able to win a stage somewhere or find myself in a break that goes to the finish. Like last year coming third on Alpe d’Huez that was pretty magic, it would have been better if Tom (Pidcock) wasn’t there, but just experiences like that.”