Geraint Thomas confirms plans to race Giro d’Italia and Tour de France in 2024 – ‘It’s going to be a massive challenge’

During an Instagram live Q&A, the Ineos Grenadiers rider admitted to being motivated by a desire to make amends for last year’s narrow Giro defeat, after he relinquished the lead to eventual winner Primoz Roglic on the stage 20 time trial.

“I’m basically going to ride the Giro and the Tour,” Thomas said. “I really wanted to go back to the Giro after last year and give it one big go, and obviously the Tour, I didn’t like missing it last year. So I’m going to try and stay on it and go into the Tour.

“It’s going to be a massive challenge because I’ve never done it before. I did it in ’17 but crashed out of both, so hopefully, it will be a bit better than that.

“It’s my 18th year as a professional so I need to mix it up a bit, I find. It’s something which will certainly get me out of bed in the morning.”

The 37-year-old, who won the Tour de France in 2018, also revealed his provisional schedule for the upcoming season.

“I’m going to start with Algarve at the minute, and then basically the same run-in as I had last year,” Thomas added. “So [Volta a] Catalunya, Sierra Nevada as an altitude camp, [Tour of the] Alps and Giro.

“So it’s maybe like 17 days of racing going into the Giro, so not a hell of a lot for obvious reasons really, because by the time you get to the Tour, you don’t want to have 50-odd days in you.”

Thomas signed a two-year contract extension with Ineos Grenadiers, formerly Team Sky, having joined in 2010, and said Sir Dave Brailsford was involved in the decision to race in the two iconic Grand Tours.

But it is expected Brailsford will still be hands-on with Ineos Grenadiers, the team he co-founded.

“Dave Brailsford was making the call and he left it to the team to discuss and debate, and then we’d decide,” Thomas continued. “[After much discussion], it got to a stage where I was just like, ‘Can we just decide now please’.

“It had always been in the back of my mind going back to the Giro, since last year really. Then speaking to the team, they were still keen for me to go to the Tour. So then it was kind of just like, ‘Why don’t we just try and do both?’

“It was fairly early on in December time really [that it was decided].”