TURNING POINT

He’s won four Tour titles, but some find his wins predictable. Sophie Hurcom asks if we’ve got Chris Froome wrong

The 2016 Tour de France was the turning point. When Chris Froome took all the criticisms that he and Team Sky had sucked the fun out of the Tour, that they rode like robots and had made the Tour predictable, and raced in a way we had never seen from him before. He attacked over a mountain descent; he attacked in the finale of a flat stage in crosswinds to pick up a handful more seconds. He actually ran up Mont Ventoux while wearing the yellow jersey. “There’s no way anyone can say the racing style is boring and predictable as they have in the past,” Froome said.

But are the criticisms levelled at Froome, from fans and the media, that his Tour wins have been largely boring and unexciting, that he neutralises a race by sitting behind his team-mates’ train before gaining time on a mountain finish, entirely fair in the first place? Froome’s biggest strengths are obviously his climbing and time trialling, which have been where he’s gained so much of the advantages and secured his titles, and he’s had the strength of the best team in the peloton to call upon, but his victories were far from without drama and intrigue.

In 2013, between the summit finish and TT stage wins, Froome was isolated and forced to chase repeated attacks from Nairo Quintana. He missed a late breakaway and lost time to Alberto Contador. In 2015, his attack on La Pierre SaintMartin in the yellow jersey is what everyone remembers, but as early as stages 2 and 3 Froome was gaining time. In the Netherlands coastal crosswinds, he all but put Quintana out of contention before the race had even begun and a day later he escaped up the Mur de Huy to scamble a few more seconds. Even in 2017, Froome was booed by the crowd in Stade de Velodrome, Marseille, on the penultimate TT stage. But he’d hung on by the skin of his teeth at times to arrive there in yellow.

To win the Tour you need to be a complete allround rider. Froome may have won the Tours in the mountains and time trials, but even when his victories were all but assured early on, his wins still gave us plenty of talking points.