EDWARD PICKERING

How do you solve a problem like Chris Froome? When news of his adverse analytical finding for salbutamol emerged last year, the 2018 Tour seemed a long way away. Well, now it’s right upon us and we still don’t know if he’ll ride, or if ASO will succeed in preventing him from doing so, or if the 1,500word defence he has submitted is a plausible one. All that is without taking into account whether he should voluntarily pull out of the race. (Note to the optimistic: that’s not going to happen.) And the final factor that has turned the run-up to the Tour into the perfect storm happened the week before we went to press: Froome’s return from the dead in the Giro and that solo stage win in Bardonecchia, which gave him the pink jersey. If cycling wanted this story to quietly go away, Froome’s third consecutive grand tour win made it headline news.

Given the year Sky have had, and the fact they had their knuckles rapped for non-existent medical record keeping by the British Parliament’s DCMS, they might have considered the wisdom of exuberantly tweeting a post-Giro picture of Froome with the three grand tour winner’s jerseys he is currently in possession of when the red one could be taken away any day. But Sky have always combined being extraordinarily good at winning bike races with being extraordinarily tone-deaf with their PR.

Nevertheless, there’s more to every Tour than the perennial scandals which drift around the race like flotsam on the Vendée coast. After a Giro which was marked by an incredible battle between Simon Yates and Tom Dumoulin, and an above-average Classics season, I’m hoping for a more open Tour than we’ve seen recently. Though we haven’t ignored Froome at all in this, our Tour preview, we’ve looked at all the other contenders, along with the route and the teams. Let’s hope we remember the 2018 Tour for all the right reasons.