Geoff's Grand Tour clocks up £250,000
Former Wolves player Geoff Thomas has successfully completed all three cycling Grand Tours – clocking up £250,000 so far for Cure Leukaemia.
Only 39 professional riders have ever completed all three of the gruelling events in the same year – the Giro D’Italia, Le Tour de France and the La Vuelta a España.
And his team was the first amateur group of riders ever to complete the total of 10,504km, all in only 63 days of cycling.
Thomas is now back home in the UK and is continuing to promote his team’s achievement in a bid to push the total raised to around £600,000 over the coming months.
He said: “I don’t think any one of us when we had finished really understood what we had done. I think that might take a while.
“Over the last five days there has been a swelling of interest and support for us and a lot of coverage that we had struggled to get at the start. La Vuelta a España was the hardest and my favourite tour.
“Each day was a massive challenge and there was not a single easy day. Just completing what was in front of us each day was amazing. Some of the climbs were brutal.
“Even the professionals had to labour up some of them.”
Thomas was at Molineux from 1994 to 1997. He was given just three months to live a year after being diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukaemia just a year retiring from football. But he has been in remission since 2005.
He completed the Three Tours Challenge alongside businessman Doug McKinnon, wealth manager James Maltin and chef Hayden Groves.
Thomas said that during the La Vuelta a España he had been in contact with eventual winner Chris Froome about the route, which he cycled a day in advance.
He said: “I just sent him a text to warn him about a climb that wasn’t categorised in the first couple of days and he sent one back saying ‘thanks very much.’ I got talking to him through the texts and he did say it would be interesting to see what you think of the climb you do tomorrow, so we let him know what it was like.
“It was a tough one, 18 degrees gradient, so we have had a little contact.
“I won’t say we were instrumental in him wearing the red shirt, but it is great to have the support of Chris and he has said in the past he would like to help in the future.”
Cure Leukaemia is seeking to raise £1m by the end of the year in order to fully fund the expansion of the Centre for Clinical Haematology at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. This would double the capacity of the facility.
Visit justgiving.com/fund raising/3tours to make a donation
