GERAINT THOMAS GEARS UP FOR A SECOND CAREER WHILE STILL RACING
Thomas has a knack for connecting with guests and, perhaps unintentionally, breaking news.
Most cyclists in the final year of their professional racing career only begin to think about what comes next after they stop racing. Not Geraint Thomas.
The winner of the 2018 Tour de France and runner-up at the 2023 Giro d’Italia is the host his long-running podcast, “Watts Occurring.” Thomas, along with former teammate Luke Rowe and British journalist Tom Fordyce, interviews fellow cyclists and the occasional celebrity.
Should Thomas retire at the end of the year—he’ll turn 39-years-old in May— the Geraint Thomas Cycling Club, a membership based group that hosts rides on Zwift, and “Watts Occurring” could provide the foundation upon which he can build a media business.
If there’s an American equivalent, it’s Tom Brady, who retired at 44-years-old after 22 season in the NFL. It’s not just their longevity and success in their respective sports that are similar. Both are walking conflicts-of-interest.
Brady now owns part of the Las Vegas Raiders even as he calls the biggest games of the week for Fox Sports. Meanwhile, Thomas is the de facto leader of the Ineos Grenadiers even as he discusses tactics, strategy, and personnel on “Watts Occurring.”
Watts Happened?
It’s one thing to do this when a team is winning.
Ineos is a British team with one of the biggest budgets in professional cycling. The team won the Tour de France seven times between 2012 and 2019.
But it is now in a multiyear slump and the team is in disarray.
Talented riders have jumped ship. New recruits have not panned out and developed into star riders. Others have been injured and not recovered their top form.
When teams are not winning, sniping follows. Ineos is no different as analysts and reporters have tried to get at the heart of what’s happened.
What’s unusual and perhaps the clearest sign of disarray is that management allows its star rider to host a podcast where he dishes about the team’s struggles and his teammates.
Last year, Thomas and Rowe did an episode titled, “What next for the Ineos Grenadiers?”
While they said they discussed what to talk about before the show, Thomas and Rowe seemed unprepared for the conversation. Interviewing yourself about a difficult situation you are facing is, well, difficult.
Rowe, who is now retired, admitted it was a “hot topic” and tried to joke that the team had slipped because he wasn’t riding due to injury. But self-deprecation only gets you so far.
They stumbled through the segment with platitudes and unfinished thoughts.
“It was not just one thing,” they said. “The team’s problems did not happen all at once.”
Rather, it was a “slow and steady decrease” largely due to bad luck and poor recruitment.
“We’re trying to be as brutally honest as we can be,” Rowe said.
Perhaps realizing they were saying nothing, Thomas then faulted the younger British riders, Tom Pidcock, Ben and Connor Swift, and Ethan Hayter.
But, especially, Pidcock.
A Tour de France stage winner, Pidcock was so unhappy with the team that he focused on winning the gold medal in the mountain bike race at the Paris Olympics (he did). In December, after months of speculation, he decamped for Q36.5, a Swiss-based team, that won’t even be invited to the Grand Tours this year.
After five more minutes of discussion about losing the team’s foundation of younger riders and criticizing them for wanting instant results without doing the hard work, Rowe finally said, “Let’s move on.”
While that issue might have put Thomas in an awkward position, he otherwise seemed completely unbothered by the potential conflict of interest or any fallout for divulging insider information that the team’s management or its PR flacks might have wanted him to withhold.
I reached out to Jean Smyth, Ineos’ head of communications, who said Thomas is inundated with requests while racing in Australia and unlikely would be able to assist with my inquiry. (Good response — at least it’s direct and honest.) I also sent requests for comment to Rowe and Fordyce, but received no replies.
Fair play to Thomas
On the podcast, Thomas can be a bundle of contradictions—witty and irritable, self-assured and perplexed. Fordyce’s presence makes the production more professional and he acts as a brake on the joshing and razzing of their guests — most of whom are friends of theirs.
This is all to say that the podcast can be refreshing and a good listen. Thomas inadvertently or reluctantly can reveal too much. It’s not quite what Washington insiders call a Kinsley Gaffe, but close enough.
More often than not, it’s how he says what he says that is more revealing than what is actually said.
With a “pfffttttt…” or an, “Ah, mate, I dunno,” Thomas, who is Welsh, says everything without saying much at all.
“Fair play to you, mate,” if he’s impressed with something a guest has done.
Breaking News
Thomas can do a good job, even if an unintended one, of giving listeners a peek into the life of a professional cyclist.
During the Tour de France last year, he had actor-director Ben Stiller on as a guest. Stiller, it turns out, is working on a movie about the thrilling 1986 Tour de France.
On his final podcast in 2024, he and Fordyce interviewed US cyclist Kristen Faulkner, the Harvard educated rower-turned venture capitalist-turned professional cyclist who won gold medals in the women’s road race and on the track at the Paris Olympics last summer.
Faulkner retold the well-reported story how she initially was not selected to participate in the road race because she finished second in the time trial. When triathlete Taylor Knibb, the winner of the time trial at the US National Championships, gave up her spot for the road race, Faulkner was set to take her spot.
But Faulkner told Thomas that USA Cycling’s executives did not want her to participate in the road race because they felt that she could not win. In fact, she said that a USA Cycling computer analysis showed that she only had a six percent chance of winning. To Faulkner’s credit, she pushed back and offered up a detailed plan on how she would win.
That USA Cycling did not want Faulkner, an incredibly accomplished cyclist, to race in the Olympics certainly is a big story. How did USA Cycling arrive at that six percent figure? What computer simulation did they use? What else was going on there?
Fair play to Thomas for breaking news. Faulkner might not have shared that detail in any other setting.
Personal Touch
Thomas can be revealing and personal, again, almost inadvertently. When he does drop his guard, there’s a realization that he’s missed a good part of the past two decades because he’s been so devoted to racing either on the track or the road.
In past episodes, he’s marveled at taking his young son camping or spending holidays in southern California with his wife’s family. At Disneyland, he was amazed or perplexed—hard to say which—that Disney offered exclusive passes for certain rides where visitors can bypass the longer lines.
In the first episode this year, Fordyce asked Thomas if he had any New Year’s resolutions. Perhaps wanting to avoid introspection, Thomas punted.
“If you want to change something,” Thomas asked, “Why wait?”
Then he revealed a bit more.
“[O]ne thing I would say being a bit more cheerful around Sara when I’m tired and hungry. But I’ve been saying that for a long time now anyway…I can get a bit grumpy sometimes when I’m tired and hungry, but that’s part of it, isn’t it?” he said.
The training takes a toll.
After the 2023 season, Thomas said he was at the pub catching up with friends on 12 of 14 nights and getting drunk—he does not drink during the season.
In a sport where one’s watts-per-kilogram ratio is everything, dropping seven or eight kilograms gained during the off-season to return to his racing weight cannot be easy. It is not surprising that it takes a toll on him and his family.
That’s the best part of the podcast. Those glimpses into Thomas’ life when the professional cyclist and the father, husband, and teammate collide.