
Geraint Thomas will become the third Briton, and the third Team Sky rider, in just seven years to taste Tour de France glory in Paris on Sunday, with Chris Froome claiming they were driven on by the hostility they have encountered over the past three weeks.

Froome will also take a place on the podium on the Champs Elysees after the processional roll into the French capital this afternoon but, judging by the abuse Sky have received during more than 2,000 miles of racing, it is unlikely to be an entirely joyous occasion.

But Froome, who came into the race hoping to win a fifth Tour but will instead have to settle for third behind Thomas and Tom Dumoulin, said: 'When there is negativity it brings us together as a team. I definitely felt that with the riders. We bonded faster. It feels as if we're out against the world.

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Geraint Thomas is on the verge of winning his first Tour de France title after he maintained his big lead on Saturday

Thomas is overcome with emotion as he is congratulated by his wife Sara Elen soon after crossing the line

The couple embraced after Thomas crossed the line having secured overall victory in the world's most prestigious race

Thomas is greeted by his wife Sarah Elen Thomas after finishing third in the individual time trial on Saturday afternoon

Cameras from around the world all wanted a photograph of the Team Sky rider ahead of his historic victory

A moment that Thomas and his wife will never forget captured by the world's media at the conclusion of stage 20

Thomas heads to Paris on Sunday knowing that only a catastrophe can scupper his chances of winning the Tour

Thomas showed his relief as he stepped on the podium on Saturday afternoon still wearing the famous yellow jersey

BRITISH DOMINANCE AT TOUR DE FRANCE 2012 winner: Bradley Wiggins 2013: Chris Froome 2014: Vincenzo Nibali (Italy) 2015: Chris Froome 2016: Chris Froome 2017: Chris Froome 2018: Geraint Thomas (likely winner) Advertisement

THOMAS AT THE TOUR 2007: 140th* 2010: 67th 2011: 31st 2013: 140th** 2014: 22nd 2015: 15th 2016: 15th 2017: DNF 2018: In progress Advertisement

'We're here to win the race. It was amazing how the team pulled through, especially when off the bike it's been more difficult than it has been previously. The guys have handled it extremely well. G has handled being in the yellow jersey extremely well. You can choose to let it get to you or you can choose to let it motivate you. For us it was a motivation.'

Froome paid tribute to Thomas, who came into the race as his chief lieutenant only to emerge as team leader after some stunning performances in the mountains.

'He's been a massive part of my Tour de France victories over the years and to see him come here now in the shape he was in, it was clear to me if he was on the podium he was going to be on the top step,' he said. 'It makes me proud and I'm glad to be a part of that. Standing on the podium tomorrow will be a dream scenario for us.'

Thomas responded: 'A big thanks to Froomey because he committed to me and I really appreciate having the best stage racer ever riding for me. This is just so surreal. It is going to take a while to sink in I think. Not until last night did I think I could win — I know people won't believe it. But the last mountain stage was just a fight and I knew I had to just follow Tom like p*** on a shoe.'

After another difficult year, one dominated by a scathing government report and Froome's battle to clear his name after that adverse analytical finding at last year's Vuelta, Sir Dave Brailsford was understandably delighted to see Thomas follow Froome's victory in the Giro d'Italia in May.'Geraint will be a legend in Britain and Wales but Chris is a titan,' he said.

Thomas is set to win the Tour de France on Sunday after protecting his yellow jersey in the stage 20 time trial from Saint-Pee-sur-Nivelle to Espelette.

Thomas finished the stage with a lead in yellow of one minute and 51 seconds after finishing third on the road.

He struggled after the stage to get his words out. 'I won the Tour, man,' hew said.

'Phwoar. Oh, I can't speak man. I'm overwhelmed. It's insane. The last time I cried was when I got married.'

Thomas went straight over to his wife Sarah Elen after finishing another day of cycling knowing Sunday should be a glorious day.

His closest rival in the general classification, Dumoulin, won the stage by one second from Chris Froome and 14 seconds from Thomas, but the world time trial champion never looked like putting Thomas' comfortable cushion in danger.

Thomas will become the third British winner of the race, joining Sir Bradley Wiggins and Froome, and it will mean the trio have won six of the last seven editions, all in Team Sky colours.

Thomas has worn yellow since the end of stage 12 but rarely discussed the prospect of carrying the jersey all the way to Paris.

But with the general classification contest now over, the emotions came out.

'I can't believe it,' he said. 'I'm welling up. I don't know what to say. It is just overwhelming. I didn't think about it all race and suddenly I won the Tour.'

Thomas handled stage 20 in perfect fashion and has been a picture of calm throughout this gruelling Tour de France

Holland's Tom Dumoulin (left) is the closest to Thomas but in the overall standings but is a long way off the Welshman's lead

It's starting to sink in. Geraint Thomas embraces Team Principal Sir Dave Brailsford. Not a dry eye left in the house! 😂 #TDF2018 pic.twitter.com/NSzi5GSPjG — Team INEOS (@TeamINEOS) July 28, 2018

Thomas's Team Sky team-mate Chris Froome pictured during his individual time trial run in the south of France on Saturday

Froome finished second at the end of stage 20 and could still finish the Tour in second place ahead of Dumoulin

Speaking of Saturday's stage, he said: 'I felt good, I felt strong, I felt really good actually. I heard I was up and I was maybe pushing a bit hard sometimes.

'Nico (sports director Nicolas Portal) told me to just relax, take it easy and just make sure I win the tour, and that's what I sort of did.

'It's just overwhelming. I can't speak man. It's just incredible. I believed I could beat the guys here but to do it on the biggest stage of all over three weeks, it's insane.

'The last time I cried was when I got married and I don't know what's happened to me.'

Froome's performance was enough to put him back on the podium and he will finish third overall, having overhauled LottoNL-Jumbo's Primoz Roglic on the stage.

Froome had started the Tour looking for a record-equalling fifth Tour title and seeking a rare Giro-Tour double, but he found that attempting to win a fourth consecutive Grand Tour was a step too far.

Geraint Thomas has been unstoppable at the Tour de France but remains the modest guy you would love to have a pint with By Ian Herbert for the Daily Mail It's a rare elite cyclist who begins his reflections on life in the sport by admitting that he once wore pants under his Lycra kit at a race in Cardiff's northern suburbs. 'It led to an awkward but important conversation in the changing rooms,' Geraint Thomas related. ''What, you've got pants on? 'Well yeah, haven't you?'' Geraint Thomas aged 16 in his school sports portrait Many such shared stories made a book Thomas wrote a few years ago a publishing hit and genuinely one of the best in cycling's vast literature. He told of shaving his legs as a 14-year-old in a Port-a-loo at a race in Germany. Loving his first cycling-specific shades so much that he barely wore them. Suffering such an extreme case of the chronic fatigue cyclists call 'bonk' that, after pedalling home, 'I just kept nudging the doorbell with my forehead in the hope that someone inside might hear me.' After 21 days in which the French have made it patently clear how much they loathe the clinical, robotic, po-faced Team Sky machine, grinding on to victory, Thomas provides the antidote. Never has one deeply unpopular team more needed a winner as self-deprecating and human as the man they all call 'G'. There was normality from the start - not least school-days at Cardiff's Whitchurch High School where Thomas, Gareth Bale and Sam Warburton were all alumni within a three year period in the last decade: a Welsh golden generation if ever there was one. A life in cycling seems to have been a happy accident. The nine-year-old Thomas had turned up to swim at the local leisure centre, when he peered through a fence and saw the local Maindy Flyers club training on the track which encircles a neighbouring athletics track. 'He came along a few days later and had a go himself,' the club's Debbie Wharton said on Friday. 'When he first started, he was just like any of the other kids on the bike, wearing baggy shorts and trainers.' The Lycra came later. Despite prodigious early promise, many were coming around to the view that the 32-year-old had been cut out for a life in the slipstream. His years at the Tour de France have been defined by his work as a domestique for Chris Froome. A bad day is 'when Froome is alone in the front group of twenty and there are sixty kilometres to go,' he said in the book, 'The World of Cycling, According to G.' (Even the title is a mickey-take.) A good day is 'when you deflect every nightmarish arrow slung at you. One by one, you throw yourself onto the pyre so that your leader may be venerated.' Froome (right) appreciates the contribution Thomas has made to his four Tour de France wins He has venerated Froome far less than Sir Bradley Wiggins, despite shepherding him to three Tour de France titles. It is impossible to avoid the impression that he likes Froome far more. Thomas found Wiggins' mood unpredictable, though he has found Froome's lack of ego and often vacant personality endearing. In one of their early encounters, Froome wore a traditional Kenyan sarong - 'also known as a towel worn as a skirt,' Thomas drily observed. Thomas also delighted in Froome's lack of cycling knowledge. 'Who's that Astana guy? He's quick,' he asked Thomas after the 2013 Tour of Oman. 'Mate, it's (Vincenzo) Nibali,' Thomas informed him. 'The success hasn't gone to his head,' Thomas has said of Froome. 'He can handle the mickey-taking - about how he stays upright on his bike, that he knows nothing about anything but cycling today. Tell him you're watching the Six Nations and he'll ask which six and why, what are they doing?' Even in the last three weeks, he's been brutally straight about his own place in their dual pecking order. 'I'm just 'erm… maybe a bit more than a pawn,' Thomas said after the defining Stage 12, when he eased away from Froome to record an historic second consecutive stage win at Alpe d'Huez. That was the evening Chris Boardman wondered aloud about whether all this modesty was actually a cover for a slight mental deficit. The Welshman, who rode 20 stages of the 2013 Tour with a broken hip, is treated after a crash Thomas early in his career as an older teenager racing for a Welsh team, years before he would become a world champion 'He's had several opportunities in the past and… folded, Boardman said on ITV. 'I think he's a little bit fragile on that front and it's a way to deflect the pressure.' It was an allusion to the solitary off-days which Thomas always seems to have had in the mountains. He was fourth overall after a brilliant Stage 17 climb three years ago, but calamity on La Toussuire two days later saw him lose 22 minutes. He finished 15th. Others who know Thomas well agree that his career in the shadows of others have left the question of that elusive winning mentality answered. 'Others were always the stars,' one source tells Sportsmail. 'First Mark Cavendish, who he came through the track academy with, and then Wiggins and Froome on the road. 'The elite competitors tend not to be normal. Thomas is balanced. You could have a pint with him. That's not normal where these kinds of competitors are concerned.' Advertisement

Dumoulin won the stage on Saturday but it will matter very little as the Tour reaches its conclusion in France this weekend

Soon after, Thomas emotionally celebrated being in the yellow jersey at the end of stage 20, effectively securing him victory

He threw his arms into the sky while clutching a yellow lion that will be added to his collection of days holding the leader's jersey

Thomas emulates Wiggins in converting himself from an Olympic team pursuit champion into the winner of the world's biggest road race.

The 32-year-old had never before finished in the top 10 of a Grand Tour. In his only previous serious attempt to win one, he was forced to withdraw following a crash midway through last year's Giro d'Italia.

Though Team Sky have faced ill-feeling on the French roadside once again in this Tour, Thomas is a popular figure in the world of cycling and victory for a man so long accustomed to playing a supporting role for others will be celebrated far and wide.

Thomas had survived Friday's big test, a 200.5-kilometre stage from Lourdes to Laruns which took the peloton over three of the toughest Pyrenean climbs - the Aspin, Tourmalet and Aubisque. He started the time trial knowing his buffer would be enough if he could avoid incident.

Intermittent rain, the first significant downfall of the entire Tour, created unpredictable conditions on Saturday's 31km course. There was one significant scare for Thomas with around 19km to go when the bike almost slipped from underneath him on a right-hand bend.

The surprising Wales school where new Tour de France champion Geriant Thomas is just the latest superstar product Geraint Thomas' looming Tour de France victory is just the next chapter of a small high school's success story that 'Hollywood could not have written'. Thomas went to the same Cardiff school as Gareth Bale and Sam Warburton, the Welsh cyclist being just a few years ahead of the Real Madrid superstar and the British and Irish Lions rugby captain at Whitchurch High School in Wales. 'To have three like this is just incredible,' the school's head of sport Steve Williams said. A very young Thomas (right) competing with older boys at Whitchurch High School Thomas, 32, is three years older than his fellow Whitchurch alumni Bale and Warburton. But just like them he shared a love for all school sports and excelled in athletics 'What can you say? Wow! I'm not sure there is anything to compare it with is there? I don't think Hollywood could have come up with it. You could not have written it.' 'The school has been buzzing - the head, the board of governors - everybody is willing him on. 'It's so exciting and just a shame we're not still in school at the present because we could do something for the whole school. 'But we're really looking forward to that win on the weekend and celebrating what is just an amazing achievement.' Thomas, 32, is three years older than his fellow Whitchurch alumni Bale and Warburton. But just like them he shared a love for all school sports and excelled in athletics. 'What can you say? Wow! I'm not sure there is anything to compare it with is there? I don't think Hollywood could have come up with it. You could not have written it,' the school's head of sport said 'I'll never forget it, and I still see it now, how Geraint ran down that home straight in the final of the 1500 metres,' Mr Williams said. 'He was a well-rounded sportsman and also played for the rugby team before he retired from that because of the importance of his cycling. 'We recognised that he was a top sportsman in all those early years and, like Gareth and Sam, there was this other sporting activity which I hope has contributed to success in his major sport.' Advertisement

Dumoulin had to console himself with his third career Tour stage win - all of which have come in individual time trials

Thomas may have known he had a buffer to play with but he was not taking it easy as he was fastest through the first and second splits before grinding up the Col de Pinodieta and dropping back.

Dumoulin had to console himself with his third career Tour stage win - all of which have come in individual time trials.

The Team Sunweb rider's day did not get off to an ideal start when he could not find his time trial skin suit in the morning.

But with his clothing sponsor based just across the Spanish border in San Sebastian, an emergency call was placed and they whipped him up a new set of the world champion's rainbow stripes in time.

Irishman Dan Martin shipped more than two minutes in the time trial but the UAE Team Emirates rider - named the most combative in the Tour overall - did enough to protect his top 10 place as he is set to finish eighth overall.