Two of Cardiff’s landmark buildings – the City Hall, dating from 1906, and the Senedd, home of the Welsh Assembly and completed more than a century later in 2008, will be lit up in yellow this weekend to celebrate Geraint Thomas’s Tour de France victory. It’s been some journey for the 32-year-old, whose latest success seals his place in the pantheon of Welsh sporting legends.

Born in the Welsh capital in 1986, Thomas attended Whitchurch High School, where he was a couple of years above Real Madrid star Gareth Bale, and former Wales and British & Ireland Lions captain Sam Warburton, both of whom are aged 29.

His start in cycling came at Maindy Velodrome, which lies between Whitchurch and the city centre and where he rode alongside Luke Rowe, Team Sky’s road captain during the past three weeks after making a remarkable recovery from shattering his leg while on his brother’s stage weekend last year.

His talent saw him recruited to the British Cycling Academy programme and success on the track and the road followed, including the 2004 edition of Paris-Roubaix Juniors.

In 2008, he won Olympic gold in the team pursuit at the Beijing Olympics, at which point he was still combining his road and track career, having made his Tour de France debut with Barloworld the previous year when he was the youngest rider in the race.

After the 2009 season, Thomas and Barloworld team mate Chris Froome moved to the new British UCI WorldTour outfit, Team Sky, which also reunited the Welshman with another member of that gold medal winning quartet from Beijing, Bradley Wiggins.

Since joining Sky, the wins have come, initially principally  in one-day races – the 2010 national road title, and after several podium places in cobbled Classics and then, victory in the 2015 E3 Harelneke, the year after he had won the 2014 Commonwealth Games road race in Glasgow.

By then, his focus was firmly on stage racing, his first victory coming in the Bayern Rundfahrt in 2011, a race he would also win in 2014. Several other stage race victories have followed, including the two most prestigious outside the Grand Tours – Paris-Nice in 2016 and, this year, the Criterium du Dauphine.

Thomas missed the 2012 Tour de France, won by Wiggins, due to his return to the track to successfully help Team GB defend the team pursuit Olympic title at London 2012, but has ridden every edition of the race since, twice finishing 15th overall while riding for Froome.

At last year’s Tour de France, he took the yellow jersey after winning the Prologue in Dusseldorf, but crashed out of the race when he broke his collarbone after crashing on a descent on Stage 9, just two months after he’d been put out of the Giro d’Italia when he hit a race moto that had been parked on the wrong side of the road.  

Thomas has had more than his fair share of bad luck with injuries over the years. A crash on a training ride in Sydney in 2005 led to his spleen being removed, and in 2009 broke his pelvis during the time trial at Tirreno-Adriatico.

He also broke his pelvis in a crash on the opening day of the 2013 Tour de France, but rode on and completed the race.

 A lot of the fans of a man many consider to be one of the nicest and most unassuming riders in the peloton will have had their fingers crossed for no repeat of that misfortune over the past week and a half when back-to-back stage wins in the Alps saw him get into yellow – and tonight, they will be celebrating and raising a beer or two in his honour.