VA VA FROOME!
As cyclist Chris Froome enters the record books as the first Brit to win the Tour de France three times, we shine a spotlight on the country’s lowest-profile superstar
outburst. “I haven’t broken the rules, I haven’t cheated, I haven’t taken any secret substance that isn’t known of yet. I know my results will stand the test of time, that 10, 15 years down the line people won’t say, ‘Ah, so that was his secret’. There isn’t a secret. It’s basically calling me a complete fraud.
“All the hard work, all the training goes out the window when someone says you’re doping. It does bother me.” And then there was the sadness. Froome’s mother Jane, who did so much to kick-start his career, died of cancer in 2008 just five weeks before his Tour debut and never got to see the success her son had become.
Froome clearly felt her death badly and five years later dedicated his first Tour de France win to his mother. “It is difficult, but it gave me a lot of motivation and it gave me a lot of comfort,” he said of that first Tour. “It is something she would have killed to have seen and it made me very happy that I was actually able to fulfil that... I had that in mind, thinking, ‘This is my first Tour and something she would have really wanted to have seen’ and I had to stick in there and fight.”
But there have been happier times to compensate. In 2009, Froome was introduced to South African Michelle Cound, a cycling photographer. They moved to Monaco in 2011, got engaged in 2013, married in 2014 and, in December last year, their first child, a son called Kellan, was born. Just one month later Froome was made an OBE in the New Year Honours list, an award he was presented with by Prince William in May.
When they were still engaged, Michelle gave an insight into life with the great man. “People think my lifestyle must be glamorous,” she said. “But Chris is away at races or training camps for weeks at a time and, when he is at home, he still trains six or seven hours a day. The rest of the time he wants to put his feet up – he doesn’t cook and he doesn’t clean. That is pretty much what it is like all year. There is only one month of the year when he doesn’t have to ride and we get a bit of a holiday from it all.”
The rewards though for both of them will be substantial, especially in the wake of this latest win, which brought him prize money of £455,000. The glittering prizes have fallen to the man who got on his bike.