The Tour has a new storyline
● Chris Froome won the right to be in this Tour de France, but there is no such thing as the right to win. No lawyer or scientific expert can protect you from the rise of a more powerful teammate, or the old law of time that breaks even the most stubborn champions.
An impresario looking down from a French Alp would probably argue that the time had come for Froome to move aside. The Tour needed a new storyline, Team Sky were in need of a fresh figurehead and the spitting and booing of spectators needed defusing. None of this was why Froome dropped in the general classification late this week, but there was a haunting sense of an authorial hand writing him out.
Froome, said the Eurosport commentary team, “has a new reality to face. As things stand, he is a domestique [a rider who works for the benefit of his team leader] to Geraint Thomas on this Tour de France”.
Further analysis spoke of a changing of the guard that will be traced to the afternoon when Froome’s attempted counterattack petered out.
With Froome’s hold on cycling’s greatest contest now seemingly broken, he returns to a supporting role for the first time since Bradley Wiggins was the star of Sky’s show in 2012. The difference now, though, is that Froome became Thomas’s workhorse not for political reasons, but because his own grip on power had been lost.
In Thomas’s cautious responses during post-race questioning, you could see the implications sinking in. But nor could Thomas hide his own urge to cut free of his junior status.
“Were you surprised by Froome’s bad day?” Thomas was asked.
His reply: “Yeah, erm, he wanted to try something, so he went early with [Primoz] Roglic, so I just assumed he was going to be good, but, erm, he wasn’t feeling too great towards the top; but yeah, I think he’s still third. I haven’t seen anything, but I think he’s still up there.”
So who were Thomas’s main rivals now?
He said: “Obviously [Tom] Dumoulin and Roglic, they were strong today, and they are the closest to me — along with Froomey, though I don’t really class Froomey as a rival, being a teammate. But yeah, those two.”
But he knows history has served him with a chance to step over the body of a fallen champion, who has drawn the venom of spectators while riding in the shadow of a decision by cycling’s governing body to drop an anti-doping investigation against him.
Even as Froome was slipping to third, the head of US anti-doping, Travis Tygart, was calling the rider’s asthma drug case a “blow” to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s standing. Cycling’s governing body, the UCI, elected not to proceed against Froome for a high level of salbutamol after the agency advised there had been no breach of the rule.
Tygart, who helped expose Lance Armstrong as a drug cheat, did, however, say Froome had been stuck with a “worst-case scenario”.
“Athletes should not be accused, or it be inferred, that they’re not clean until proven.”
But Tygart also pointed out: “You can never unring that bell, and it’s why more answers have to be provided so that people have confidence that he’s not just a star who got away with it — that’s a natural conclusion.”
I don’t really class Froomey as a rival, being a teammate Geraint Thomas A teammate, and also a rival, of Chris Froome