In the electrifying final of the team pursuit at London 2012 – ten years ago this summer – Geraint Thomas and his track cycling teammates raced around the indoor velodrome at speeds of over 60kph, covering 4km in a world-record time of 3 minutes and 51.659 seconds, to claim a memorable gold medal. The explosive event – in which teams of four pedal in synchronicity just inches from each other’s wheels – saw Thomas unleash a brutal display of power in a short but excruciatingly intense effort. The intensity of the action is so high that riders’ brains become starved of oxygen and black dots drift in front of their eyes.
Just six years later, Thomas was excelling in a very different event. At the 2018 Tour de France – the famously gruelling three-week endurance race over the French Alps – Thomas pedalled 3,351km (the equivalent of
