THE DOUBLE
Chris Froome became only the third rider ever to complete the Tour-Vuelta double in the same season, but while his maiden victory in Spain rarely looked in doubt, he was pushed to new limits to win. Procycling looks back at the race Froome called the toughest grand tour of his career
A t the Calar Alto Observatory, scene of the finish of stage 11 of the 2017 Vuelta a España, the atmosphere was bleak. Thick cloud smothered the 2,120m summit. Rain crashed down, turning the earth to mud. It was a jarring, unpleasant contrast to the first half of the race – more like Belgium in spring than Spain in late summer, as Chris Froome said.
Only three days earlier, with the temperature in the mid-30s, the peloton had hugged the Costa Blanca, racing through Alicante, Benidorm and Calpe, the holiday towns’ streets lined almost cruelly with spectators who’d rushed from beach to roadside, clutching cold bottles of beer and clad in swimming trunks and bikinis.
Now at Calar Alto, it was warm jackets and umbrellas as far as the eye could see – which was not very far at all.
Some 500m beyond the finish, on the plateau alongside the Vuelta’s temporary HQ (a large inflatable structure sagging under the weight of rapidly filling puddles), 22 team buses were parked in a line. The first one was Team Sky’s. Funny how often theirs is closest to the finish. Inside, team principal Dave Brailsford was warming up having ridden the climb. The change in weather wasn’t going to alter his daily routine of riding at least the last hour of the stage, often with Tim Kerrison, the team’s coach, though on this occasion Kerrison had seen sense.
In the back of the bus, in what he once jokingly called his ‘bollocking room,’ Brailsford watched the stage on the television, or tried to. The picture kept flickering and breaking up. Something was wrong with the satellite dish, he said. But he seemed less concerned by that than by what he was seeing in the brief moments of clarity. It looked like Froome was in trouble.
“You just don’t know if he’s actually suffering,” said Brailsford. “Even the lads [his own team-mates] don’t know.”
Orica-Scott, with Esteban Chaves in second at the start of the day, drove hard into the final climb – the profile of the stage made it look as though there were two enormous steps to the finish, the Alto de Velefique taking them from sea level to 1,800m, a brief descent then another 920m of climbing to the observatory. As Orica faded, Bahrain-Merida took over, with Franco Pellizotti leading, while Froome had his team-mates Mikel Nieve, Wout Poels and Vuelta revelation Gianni Moscon.
Froome hooked his elbows, gripped his bars, stuck out his tongue and forced his legs round. It wasn’t pretty, but it was effective
Then, around 10km from the summit, something happened that at this Vuelta was more predictable than sunshine. Alberto Contador attacked. Nibali darted after him. Froome slipped to the back of the group. “What’s Froomey doing?” said Brailsford. He leant forward, trying to discern the flickering images. “I’m not sure about this.”
Nieve set the pace but the Basque climber kept glancing back. At one point he and Froome shared words, and Froome, who loves the heat and hates the cold, continued to look as though he might be struggling. Nibali’s move didn’t stick, but his friskiness was enough to suggest that the balance of the race could yet tilt in his favour. It was only in the final 2km, when Nieve went to the front and accelerated hard, that Brailsford relaxed. He knew that Nieve wouldn’t have done that had he not been told to do so by Froome.
Yet Nieve seemed to hesitate when he glanced back and saw Froome apparently struggling to hang on. He dropped back to help pace his leader while Miguel Ángel López jumped away for the win.
With bodies tiring on the final incline, against the force of the wind and rain, came the resurrection. Froome began clawing his way back. He hooked his elbows, gripped his bars, stuck out his tongue and forced his legs round. It was not pretty. But it was effective. His recovery – if that’s what it was – seemed to owe to doggedness, desire and a stubborn refusal to concede ground. He overhauled Nibali to place second on the stage, nabbing some bonus seconds to add to his overall lead. This on what had looked, even to his own team, like a bad day.
“Not my cup of tea,” said Froome afterwards. This was as far as he would go in terms of admitting any fallibility. On the contrary, he said he had never been in any real difficulty, and that he deliberately “sat back” on the climb. “I didn’t want to get involved in the attacking. The others – Nibali, Contador, [Wilco] Kelderman – stood to gain more than me, so I sat back.”
Was it true? How deep had Froome gone? Had he gone deep at all? It was impossible to tell. And if Brailsford and Nieve couldn’t read the signals, what about his rivals?
In a Vuelta with so many potential banana skins, and a revved-up Contador intent on doing as much damage as possible, to hell with the consequences, the stage to Calar Alto might not be the obvious one to pick as the most significant. There were other candidates. Stage three to Andorra perhaps, where Nibali offered a deft demonstration of his race craft and a resurgent Chaves looked ready to lead a formidale Orica challenge. Or the day after Calar Alto, stage 12 to Antequera, where Contador lit the touchpaper, again, and Froome crashed twice on the descent to the finish: an ominous sign for a rider who, in his Tour wins, hardly put a foot wrong. Or stages 14 and 15 finishing on the huge climbs of La Pandera and Sierra Nevada. Or stage 17 to Los Machucos, where Froome, a day after winning the time trial, wobbled, appearing to let Nibali back in. Then, of course, came the Angliru on the penultimate day, a stage that was all about Contador where the anticipated scrap between Nibali and Froome mirrored the conditions. It was a damp squib, the rain and cold making it similar to Calar Alto, but without the intrigue. Nibali crashed on the descent before the Angliru and, with Contador scripting his own fairytale ahead, Froome was shepherded by Poels, with the Dutchman repeating his second-place finish on this mountain in the 2011 Vuelta.
In Madrid, Froome’s winning margin was 2:15 over Nibali, with Ilnur Zakarin climbing to third, his first podium in a Grand Tour, a further 36 seconds back. Froome also won the points and combined classifications. He won two stages. He wore the red jersey from stage 3
Froome has adapted his way of racing. “It’s been a bit of an evolution. I’m maturing. I’m learning to read races differently, whereas previously if I’d be feeling good you could put me on a climb and off I’d go. Now I’m thinking about what I’m doing a lot more. I try to time my attacks a lot better. I’ve looked at other aspects of Madrid, the final margin between the two was a comfortable-looking 2:15.
Which is not to suggest that Froome was lucky. He wasn’t. Having tried to win this race since 2011, when he was second, he left nothing to chance. “I’ve always come to the Vuelta and been hanging on to what I had,” he said on the first rest day, the day after his stage win at Cumbre del Sol. “The way we’ve structured the year, coming into the Tour a little underdone, I probably wasn’t as sharp as I’d normally be there.” After the Tour he went to Isola 2000 – the first time he has done an altitude camp for the Vuelta – and rode 2,500km.
Still, the suspicion was that Froome couldn’t do what he had once been able to do: attack and drop his rivals on climbs, though he said he hasn’t changed. “The general level is moving on. It’s interesting to see the power numbers from yesterday. We did the same climb two years ago and the power I was doing then, 20 guys are doing that now.” onwards. He became the first rider to win the Vuelta and Tour in the same year since Bernard Hinault in 1978 and before him, Jacques Anquetil in 1963. He is also the first rider to win the Tour and then the Vuelta in the same season, 22 years after the Spanish tour’s move from April to August.
On the face of it, he was utterly dominant. Froome, partly thanks to his formidable team, always looked the likely winner. Equally, when he said that it was the toughest grand tour he had ever done, you understood why.
Even without the same depth to the field as the Tour, the route makes the Vuelta a complicated race to control and a difficult one to win. Froome did not win through being hugely superior; he won by eking out seconds here and there, by being vigilant and not making any big mistakes, by using his team cleverly – even if it meant letting a rival gain some ground, he made sure to use his team-mates for as long as they were able, only putting his body in the wind when necessary – and by riding with his head, which meant racing conservatively.
Victory was executed in a similar way to this year’s Tour. It was very different to the 2013 and 2015 Tours, when Froome could attack in the mountains, and drop his opponents, at will.
Consider the margin to Nibali. The Italian lost 0:22 to Froome on day one in Nimes, in the team time trial; on stage five he conceded 0:26 when he suffered a bad patch on the climb to Ermita Santa Lucía; he then lost 0:57 to Froome in the 40.2km time trial at the start of the final week, and 0:34 on the Angliru, with a suspected broken rib from his crash. Two minutes, 19 seconds over those four stages. By
Froome did not win by being superior. He won by eking out seconds, by being vigilant and not making any serious mistakes
the race and tried to identify different ways of winning.”
It is tempting to wonder whether we might one day look back on the Tour-Vuelta double as the high water mark of Froome’s career. The threat might not come from any of the riders he beat in France or Spain, for the simple reason that he can always rely on time trials to claim time on them. Tom Dumoulin is a different matter, however.
It is an inexact science but a comparison between Nibali and Dumoulin at the Giro is interesting. There, Dumoulin took 2:07 out of Nibali over 39.8km, then another 54 seconds in the 29.3km time trial into Milan. Assuming Nibali was in similar shape in Spain, those are sobering gaps for Froome.
The prospect of a serious challenge to Froome and Sky will be relished by many. Their strength at the Vuelta seemed to be considered by some as an affront - a sledgehammer to crack a nut – though fans can be equally affronted when riders and teams fail to perform.!
Then there was the new Team Sky ‘hub’,!a huge structure that folded out of a truck, creating a two-storey building for riders and staff. On loan for five weeks, it accompanied them around Spain to be erected in hotel car parks –!though only when there was space. The contrast with Cannondale, whose €7m funding shortfall was revealed during the race, was jarring.!
Most of all, it was the ominous sight of a cluster of black jerseys at or near the front, ready to snuff out the moves on which the sport depends for drama and excitement,!that many found dispiriting.!
Not that the Sky machine put off Contador, who sought to attack at the merest hint of a chance. In his final race he reprised Bernard Hinault in his final Tour by “having fun”, riding neither with his head nor his heart but simply, as he responded with a wink, “My legs.” The frenzied crowds around the Trek bus each morning testified to the wisdom of an approach that would have been reckless –!had he been trying to win the Vuelta. Indeed, if you only tuned in on the final weekend, when he won on the Angliru and did a lap of honour in Madrid, you would have been forgiven for thinking that Contador did win the Vuelta. In one respect he did –!the popular vote, at least.
As Hinault discovered, champions only attain popularity when they are defeated, especially if they go down fighting. Froome will find this out, though for the moment he is comparable with early 80s Hinault – calculating, reliant on TTs and unpopular mainly because he wins. If he is anything like Hinault, it will not concern him. He can bask in his own glory at the end of a season to cap all seasons.
It was the ominous cluster of black Sky jerseys at the front ready to snuff out moves that many found dispiriting