LONDON, June 25 (Xinhua) -- Former Tour de France winner and two time Olympic gold medalist, Geraint Thomas, has been left out of Britain's cycling team for the forthcoming Paris Olympic Games.
The decision means the Welshman will not appear at the fifth Olympic Games of his career in spite of his impressive ride to finish third in this year's Giro d'Italia in May and his forthcoming role in the INEOS-Grenadiers team for the Tour de France, which begins on Saturday.
The performance director of British Cycling, Stephen Park explained that Thomas had "not been in great form" in his time trialing and adding: "there is some incredible competition and in the road race, and we have only four riders we can pick."
"We decided that the younger riders would be in better form getting to the end of the Tour, physically and mentally. It's different and Geraint will be at the end of a very long season by the time he gets there," Park continued.
Thomas won his gold medals on the track as part of the successful Team GB pursuit team in Beijing 2008 and London 2012, while last year he finished 10th in the time trial at the UCI World Championships.
Earlier this year, he said in an interview that if he went to Paris it would be to compete for medals and not just to "collect a new tracksuit."
The British men's cycling team contains recently crowned national road race champions Ethan Hayter and Josh Tarling, who won the national time-trial title, along with Tom Pidcock, who won mountain bike gold in Tokyo and will compete in both the mountain bike and road races in Paris.
The women's road racing team will be confirmed on July 4. ■
