Froome against altitude on debut

FOUR-TIME Tour de France winner Chris Froome’s rivals and teammates say he will have his work cut out dealing with the altitude when he tackles the Tour Colombia, starting tonight.

“Having Froome will be interesting because, apart from the rivalry, we’ll see how these riders go at altitude, how they feel, what they think,” Colombian Nairo Quintana, who has twice finished runner-up to Froome at the Tour de France, told sports daily Marca.

Altitude will be an important feature of July’s Tour with seven climbs rising above 2000-meters including the Col de l’Iseran, the highest paved mountain in Europe at 2770m.

While Quintana raced in last week’s Tour of San Juan in Argentina, where he finished eighth, 33-year-old Froome will be competing in his first race this season.

But with four of the six stages taking place over 2000m, Tour Colombia is going to be good preparation for the conditions the riders will face in France in little over five months time.

Froome’s 22-year-old Colombian teammate Egan Bernal won the inaugural Tour Colombia last year, but he says his illustrious Team Sky leader won’t be taking a back seat in the Andes.

“He wants to ride the Tour Colombia well. At the time and during the race we’ll see who the leader is, if it’s him or me,” said Bernal, 22.

Another rival, Rigoberto Uran, a former Froome teammate at Sky and runner-up to the Briton at the 2017 Tour when riding for his current outfit Education First Drapac, can’t see the Kenyan-born rider winning in Colombia.

The race begins in Medellin tonight with a 14km team time-trial.

It will then move on to four flat street-circuit stages, all in the Antioquia region before Sunday’s decisive finale, a 174km ride from El Retiro to the steep summit finish at Alto de Palmas.