Geraint Thomas is currently riding his final Tour de France ahead of retiring from the pro peloton in September, and that’s a good excuse to take a look back at the Pinarello Dogma F10 X-Light on which he won the 2018 Tour de France, painted yellow for the final stage around Paris.
Geraint Thomas – G to his friends – has been a key rider for Ineos Grenadiers, Team Ineos and Team Sky – the same team, different sponsors/names – since 2010. As well as the Tour de France, he has won the Critérium du Dauphiné, Paris-Nice, Tour de Suisse, Tour de Romandie, and E3 Harelbeke (plus plenty more besides), and he has been both road race and time trial national champion. He’s a double Olympic gold medallist and three-time world champion on the track too. Everyone loves G’s unassuming nature and general down-to-earthness.
Thomas is now 39 years old, whereas the rest of the Ineos Grenadiers riders in the 2025 Tour de France are all in their twenties.
“I’m looking forward to moving back to Cardiff,” he said when announcing his retirement from pro cycling. This from a bloke who has lived in Monaco for years. Like we said: down-to-earth.
Anyway, back to the bike…
Although he’d just won the 2018 Dauphiné, Thomas entered the 2018 Tour de France riding in support of Team Sky’s Chris Froome. Don’t forget how dominant Froome was at the time. He held all three Grand Tour titles going into the race. However, the Welshman proved to be the strongest climber in the race, winning on stages 11 and 12 in the Alps and extending his lead in the Pyrenees. He eventually took the overall victory by 1:51 minutes from Tom Dumoulin, with Froome in third.
What we especially loved about Thomas’s victory was that he didn’t seem able to wrap his head around it. He came across as being bemused by the whole experience, as if it was something that had happened to him rather than something he had worked towards his whole life.
“I think that I am today the most happy guy in the world. I just won the Tour de France, and I cannot believe it,” he said.
Like the rest of us, he’s a bloke who likes riding his bike. He’s just very, very good at it.
Pinarello said that the stiffness and aerodynamic efficiency of the Dogma F10 X-Light, introduced the previous year, were the same as those of the standard Dogma F10 but that the frame was 60g lighter, coming in at a claimed 760g (+/-8%, raw frame, size 53). The fork was 340g (+/-8%).
> Read our review of the Pinarello Dogma F Dura Ace Di2
Pinarello said that it saved that weight by “using the Torayca T1100G UD carbon fibre in the form of pre-preg with lower resin content already used on Dogma F8 X-Light, a new lay-up, a slower and more controlled moulding process, and new dedicated moulds”.
Everything else about the X-Light frame remained the same, so it was asymmetric, designed to handle the differing forces on either side of the bike, with flatback airfoil tube profiles. The down tube was concave, so the water bottle sat very close and was shielded by the frame for improved aerodynamic efficiency, and riders had the choice of two different bottle cage positions on the seat tube – higher for easier use or lower for reduced drag.
The head tube was tapered (1 1/8in bearing at the top, 1 1/2in bearing at the bottom) and the bottom bracket was external with an Italian thread.
Disc brakes were certainly a feature of the 2018 Tour de France – the disc-equipped Specialized S-Works Venge was ridden to victory on each of the first four road stages, for example – but Team Sky stuck with rim brakes throughout. In fact, the team didn’t make the switch until late 2021, the last in the pro peloton to do so. 
Although the team never really explained its decision to stick with rim brakes for so long, it was all about saving weight and keeping the Dogma as close as possible to the UCI’s minimum limit of 6.8kg. Those rim brakes meant that a small amount of cabling was visible on Thomas’s bike, which is something that we no longer see at the top level.
Team Sky mainly used Pro handlebars and stems, but Geraint Thomas had the one-piece Talon handlebar made by MOST, the component brand owned by Pinarello. It was designed to offer improved aerodynamics over a standard handlebar and stem. Thomas chose a 130mm stem-section and the whole lot came with a lick of yellow paint for his ride around Paris.
The Dogma F10 X-Light frame was fitted with a Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 R9150 groupset (Dura-Ace has been updated since then). Thomas used 175mm crank arms, a 53/39T chainset with an 11-30T cassette.
Team Sky used wheels from Shimano too, this bike being fitted with C60s designed to give an aero advantage without too much of a weight penalty.
What saddle did Thomas choose? Fizik’s flagship Arione R1. The Arione R1 remains in the Italian brand’s range today, although the newer 3D-printed Adaptive saddles now sit at the top in terms of price.
> New Pinarello Dogma F: the secret’s out… so is it a secret you’d want to keep?
The Dogma F10 was superseded by the Dogma F12 in 2019 and then by the Dogma F in 2021. The latest version was announced last year.
Geraint Thomas aims to make September’s Tour of Britain his last professional outing. The race is likely to finish in the centre of Cardiff, the city in which Thomas was born and raised. That would be a great way to sign off his pro career.
13 thoughts on “As he rides his final Tour de France, let’s take a look back at Geraint Thomas’s 2018 Tour-winning Pinarello Dogma F10 X-Light”
They haven’t won a GT since
They haven’t won a GT since they switched to discs #coincidence?
Nick T wrote:
Yes.
Rim brakes!
Rim brakes!
What sort of madness is this?!
Oh this ‘ old fashioned stuff
Oh this ‘ old fashioned stuff’, that never not worked it was just carbon wheels thatre better with them.. 👍
I have many entertaining*
I have many entertaining* anecdotes about rubbish rim brakes, but none about boringingly functional disc brakes.
Anti-disc brake [+anti-tubless] folk are like anti vaxxers.
*they were not entertaining at time, due to said incidents often being very scary/life threatening.
imajez wrote:
Wait what? I have some bikes with disc brakes now but none tubeless and no plans to change. And I don’t recall spending much time fixing punctures or fiddling with tyres at all in the last 6 months to year. Am I a dinosaur / RFK?
I’m not anti- either but note that there are trade-offs and they’re not all in favour of either of those two technologies. Though discs are probably more suited for “general” application now (after a fair bit of evolution / market penetration).
OTOH I don’t have any carbon frames / wheels (well – a seat and boom on the recumbent…) and a mish-mash of tech e.g. steel rim-braked / 7 speed old tourer, alloy-framed disc-braked IGH town bike and 1 x 10 recumbent bikes with suspension – and I used to run (and like) a drum brake until recently…
imajez wrote:
No they aren’t, because the anti-vax arguments were entirely based on supposition, faked evidence and conspiracy theories. The arguments against disc brakes and tubeless tires have logical and experiential/evidence-based support. You may well feel that the arguments in their favour outweigh those against them (I have no particular opinion, I have both disc and rim-braked bikes and I’m perfectly happy with both, don’t have any tubeless at the moment but might try it in future when I get a new bike/wheels) and you’re entitled to that opinion but comparing people with a rational and debatable case to the entirely irrational ravings of anti-vaxxers is just silly.
As a sidenote, you may well have many anecdotes about “rubbish” rim brakes, maybe you had inferior models or they weren’t set up properly, but as seen with the bike above, G managed to win the Tour de France with them against many primarily disc-equipped rivals, so they can’t be that rubbish.
Rendel Harris wrote:
Well that proves they’re rubbish – clearly he was slowed down much less by his rim brakes than they were by their discs!
It’s easy to dismiss Thomas’s
It’s easy to dismiss Thomas’s feats against those of his competitors and colleagues and get distracted by his battles with weight and water bottles.
It sometimes feels as if he is our forgotten champion.
He’s alway been the more human face of Sky/Ineos.
Personally, I always thought
Personally, I always thought it was a touch of class when jersey wearers saved going full monty until the final ride. Something slightly vulgar about dotty bike, shorts, shoes, gloves, glasses, etc…on the second stage.
bobbinogs wrote:
Absolutely agree, Chris Froome was pretty classy in that respect, every day he held the jersey he would add a little extra, one day yellow gloves, the next yellow glasses, yellow socks, yellow bar tape et cetera but not put on the full outfit until the Champs. Rumour had it that he was intensely superstitious about the yellow bike and wouldn’t have one in his stable until the night before the final stage, it had to be kept away from the team truck and out of his sight. I believe there was one year when he took it so far that he gave orders that a yellow bike wasn’t to be prepared for him at all until the final stage and Pinarello sprayed it and delivered it overnight. Funnily enough his superstition seemed to be justified when he crashed on Mont Ventoux and he was given a yellow Mavic bike by neutral service which turned out to be the wrong size with the wrong make of pedals and he had to discard it.
There was somebody in the Giro last year, can’t remember the name, who was given the maglia azzura to wear because Pogacar was leading but was also leading in GC and he decided to wear the full on skinsuit, helmet, gloves and shoes, just looked ridiculous.
Pog won tho, would you say
Pog won tho, would you say that to his face?
leedorney wrote:
You’ve misread my comment, I was talking about the rider who was wearing the climber’s jersey for the day because Pogacar was in pink: that rider was in second place in the climber’s competition and only wore the jersey because of the tradition that all jerseys should be on show, but he decided to wear the full outfit as if he was the leader. No comment on Pogacar involved.