London (AFP) – Geraint Thomas thinks life has been “insane” since he stood in the yellow jersey and proudly held aloft the Welsh flag on the podium in Paris as Tour de France champion — but the madness may just be beginning.
The likeable softly-spoken 32-year-old, who lives in Monaco, will have to get used to transforming from kingmaker for Chris Froome to the king himself, and that won’t come easy, according to 2012 Tour de France champion and former Team Sky team-mate Bradley Wiggins.
“He’ll feel the same inside but people’s perception of him will change,” Wiggins said on Eurosport.
“Everything will be different from now on.
“He won’t be able to walk down the street in Wales now without people coming up to him.
“I think he may now be Wales’s biggest sports star.”
Thomas got an inkling of how far the madness was heading when he opened the newspapers on the morning after his triumph.
“One thing stands out is putting on Instagram (a picture of) myself and my wife Sara eating Welsh cake in bed after the party on Sunday and the next thing it is on the front page of a paper, that is a bit crazy already,” he said.
Being described as Wales’s top sports star is some accolade for Thomas, the one-time shy schoolboy from Cardiff’s Whitchurch High School, which also produced the three years younger duo of former Wales and British and Irish Lions rugby captain Sam Warburton and Real Madrid football superstar Gareth Bale.
“It is insane all of us close to each other and incredible for a school in Cardiff,” Thomas told Channel 4 News earlier this week.
His return to Cardiff — pencilled in according to The Daily Telegraph for Thursday — promises to outdo even the ticker tape parade accorded to Bale and his Welsh team-mates after reaching the Euro 2016 semi-finals.
Already Wales began celebrating its latest sporting hero on the eve of his win — illuminating its ancient castles spread out across the land in luminous yellow, the colour of the tour de France winner’s jersey.
– ‘Like family to me’ –
However a humbled Thomas — who said seeing the reaction on Twitter after he had stepped off the podium was “bonkers” — hopes he will be able to manage fame in the same way as Chris Hoy, the British track cycling legend he regards as a mentor.
from World Soccer Talk https://ift.tt/2n4qMt2
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