Dear Editor,
The Tour De France, a race so grueling in its challenges, its length and duration –
5 mountains stages, 3,500 kilometers of racing over three weeks.
Cyclists require courage, determination, tenacity and brute strength, just to name a few, to grind up mountain ranges only needing bravery bordering on insanity to descend at speeds of over 90 Kilometers per hour.
Geraint Thomas, the first ever Welshman, has won the 2018 Tour De France. He fended off a courageous challenge from the Dutchman, Tom Dumoulin.
In two congratulatory interviews (https://nos.nl/l/2243653) we saw another side of this winner.
It took an unhuman effort to win, it took an incredible show of humanity to accept it.
He showed simple honesty, bewilderment boarding on innocence, beautiful unfiltered emotion, gratitude and grace, a heart and a soul. The 2018 Tour De France, did not only bring us a champion it bought us a rare and remarkable individual.
In winning Thomas shared two key factors. These factors serve as life lessons.
In Geraint Thomas’s own words he said he believed in himself. He did, and he believed that bit more than any of his competitors.
We have seen this important trait in others, namely Michael Edwards, better known as Eddie the Eagle. Eddie had incredible self belief. He went on to fly with the eagles, and so will Geraint Thomas fly too, for Geraint Thomas’s name is now flying amongst the world’s greatest cyclists. For when one truly believes, the impossible can be the possible.
Thomas also attributed his win to the fact that he took each day and each stage at a time. We are told time and time again to enjoy the journey and not the destination. Thomas is living proof, he never once thought about winning, even when he had won, it was all too difficult to comprehend. He simply took one pedal at a time.
Thomas serves as an example to all of us. We can reach remarkable achievements beyond our wildest dreams if we just focus on the immediate job in hand. If we only just keep taking the one step and then another, so on so forth. In the end we will get there. Thomas did it, one pedal at a time for 3,500 kilometers for three weeks.
Geraint Thomas, the 2018 Tour De France champion, has left a legacy that few from Wales will ever want to forget and maybe he has left us all with something we will not want to forget too.
A lesson in life.
Brett R. Mucklow
