2018 Tour de France
July 31, 2018
On Sunday, July 29, Welsh cyclist Geraint Thomas raced to his first Tour de France victory. The 32-year-old Thomas, who won cycling gold at the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games, crossed the finish line nearly two minutes ahead of second-place rider Tom Dumoulin of the Netherlands. Four-time Tour de France champion Chris Froome, a member of Thomas’s Team Sky, finished in third place, 33 seconds behind Dumoulin. The race, nicknamed la Grande Boucle (the Big Loop), is one of the most popular sporting events in the world.
Geraint Thomas wears the leader’s yellow jersey ahead of other riders during stage 14 of the Tour de France on July 21, 2018. Credit: © Radu Razvan, Shutterstock
In the race’s largely ceremonial 21st and final stage on Sunday, Thomas entered Paris wearing the leader’s distinctive yellow jersey as he coasted in a comfortable peloton (pack of riders) amid thousands of cheering fans and multiple layers of police and other security. After crossing the finish line on the famous Avenue des Champs-Élysées, a jubilant Thomas grasped the Welsh flag and saluted the many people from Wales who had come to see him finish. He is the first Welsh cyclist to win the Tour de France.
Tour de France racers pedal through the tough mountain stages in the Alps of southeastern France. Credit: © Bogdan Cristel, Reuters
In 2018—the 105th Tour de France—the race began July 7 on Noirmoutier, an island connected by causeway to the Pays de la Loire region of western France. The route wound through the Loire Valley, up through Brittany, and across Normandy before shooting north to the border town of Roubaix near Lille. A rest-day air transfer carried the riders to Annecy in the shadow of Mont Blanc in southeastern France, where the race resumed on July 17. Thrilling mountain rides whisked the riders through the Alps and down into the Rhône Valley, where the riders crossed the foothills of the Pyrenees along France’s border with Spain. After a rest day in the picturesque city of Carcassonne on July 23, the race resumed with tough mountain stages to Pau and Lourdes before a blistering individual time trial—and for all intents and purposes, the end of the race—in the Basque Country on July 28. A second air transfer then took the riders to the Parisian suburb of Houilles, where the riders ceremoniously pedaled their way to the big finish.
Thomas ran steadily early in the race, creeping into second place behind leader Greg Van Avermaet of Belgium in the tour’s sixth stage in Brittany. Thomas clung to second place before finally overtaking Van Avermaet in the Alpine stage 11 to grab the lead. Thomas won stage 12 too, and kept the yellow jersey on his back for the rest of the race. He finished with an overall time of 80 hours, 30 minutes, and 37 seconds. The 2018 Tour de France began with 176 riders from 30 countries, and 145 cyclists completed the grueling race. The tour’s 21 stages were won by 13 different racers. Van Avermaet, who donned the yellow jersey from stages 3 through 10, faded to a 28th-place finish.
The Tour de France leader wears the maillot jaune (yellow jersey) for each stage he maintains the overall advantage. This year, France’s Pierre Latour won the maillot blanc (white jersey) as the race’s best young rider. Julian Alaphilippe of France earned the maillot à pois (polka dot jersey) as the race’s best climber in the tough mountain stages. The maillot vert (green jersey) went to Slovakia’s Peter Sagan as the overall leader in points (awarded for consistently high stage finishes). The Tour de France is one of three major touring races of cycling; the others are the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España.
