Froome keeps his cool and is fit for another battle to be king of the road
EVEN after being knocked off his bike recently by an impatient driver, Chris Froome responded to the horn of a similarly disgruntled motorcyclist last week by apologising for riding two abreast on a climb heading out of Monaco.
He was not actually at fault and he quickly exposed the futility of the motorcycle rider’s complaint when the threetimes Tour de France winner then had to hit his own brakes after catching the same grumpy individual on the subsequent descent. But Froome is nothing if not courteous and polite, as he further demonstrated when reflecting on a discussion with team-mates about an incident at the Giro d’Italia in May.
The professional peloton has always been a cut-throat environment but Tom Dumoulin discovered that even toilet breaks are no longer sacred when an urgent need to empty his bowel was seen by his rivals as an opportunity to gain some time. As Dumoulin dropped his shorts with only the post of a road sign for privacy, the other general classification contenders continued to put the hammer down.
This prompted Froome and his Team Sky colleagues to wonder how they might deal with such an eventuality should it arise at the Tour, which begins here today with a 14km time trial in Dusseldorf.
‘It’s an interesting one,’ said Froome during an interview near his Monaco home. ‘I wouldn’t have done what he (Dumoulin) did. He still won the race so
chapeau (hats off) for that. But I don’t think I’d have stopped and wasted a minute by the side of the road. I would have just gone in my shorts.’
Froome, however, was prepared to listen to the advice of a teammate on how to make the best of a sticky situation. ‘You’d stuff a cycling cap down your shorts and go in that,’ he said. ‘Although you wouldn’t want to then pick that up as a souvenir on the side of the road.’
This consideration for others is one of many admirable qualities that Froome has long seemed to possess. It would be naive, though, to ignore his ruthless streak, one he will be quick to employ — should it be required — in the much-anticipated battle for supremacy with his close friend, training partner and former team-mate, Richie Porte, over the next three weeks.
But looking at this year’s race purely in the context of whether the likeable Briton remains capable of riding faster up mountains than Porte and their principal rivals has never been more difficult. No, this year one does so against the backdrop of nine turbulent months that have done much to damage the reputation of Team Sky and expose as a myth their claim to be the world’s most ethical cycling team. It might appear tough on Froome when he was not the recipient of those three particularly controversial medical exemptions for triamcinolone and was not even riding in the 2011 Criterium du Dauphine when a medical package was delivered to the French Alps for the same rider — Sir Bradley Wiggins.
But Froome is part of Sky — indeed yesterday he signed a new two-year contract — and not even those new white jerseys can distance him as far as he would like from his team’s darker practices. It does not help, of course, when Sir Dave Brailsford sits alongside side him at the official Tour press conference this week and brazenly asks an audience of cycling journalists to ‘believe in us’. ‘We are doing it the right way,’ he then dared add. Not even his own riders would necessarily agree with that, now that they are aware of the decision Brailsford was party to when it was agreed they would give Wiggins a powerful corticosteroid prior to three major road races, including the 2012 Tour he won. Wiggins insists it was done to combat allergies but experts have questioned the need for such a strong drug that also happens to have a history of abuse in cycling, not least because of its weight loss and recovery benefits.
Brailsford’s responses to important questions have been far from satisfactory since the Fancy Bears first published Wiggins’ medical records and this newspaper was then told about Simon Cope and a Jiffy bag that sparked a parliamentary hearing. Severe criticism came from UK Anti-Doping when it turned out there were no medical records to support their claim that the package contained a legal decongestant. An explanation, let us not forget, that took months to emerge.
Froome, understandably, is tired of talking about it and made a decision back in March to focus only on what he can control; in essence his own training and the pursuit of a fourth Tour victory.
But the controversy is one that further undermines the credibility of a sport that, for all the efforts now being made to clean it up, remains saddled with these conflicts and a huge amount of hypocrisy.
In a week when race organisers clearly wanted to be seen to be making a moral stand by not inviting Jan Ullrich — the German 1997 Tour winner who has since admitted to doping — to the Grand Depart, other drug cheats remain on the invite list. On Thursday night another selfconfessed doper, Richard Virenque, was even seen hosting an official team unveiling. A nonsense.
When it comes to Team Sky’s problems, Froome is now choosing to employ a pragmatic, some might say expedient approach. There is no public criticism of Brailsford, however obvious his displeasure earlier in the season. No desire to stir up
50 FROOME needs to lead the Tour for six more stages to have worn the yellow jersey for 50 days. Only Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Miguel Indurain and Jacques Anquetil have done this.
the hornets’ nest when he wants to focus only on the 3,500km of racing that lie ahead and follow that up with another crack at the Vuelta a Espana next month.
In terms purely of the Tour, he suggested it would be foolish to read too much into his form compared to Porte’s in last month’s Dauphine. It turns out he was suffering with a stomach bug that was particularly bad on the eve of the time trial.
But his preparation has also been structured so he reaches his peak later in the Tour — in what is likely to be the decisive third week — in the hope that he can remain there for the Vuelta.
‘I was pretty light on race days (prior to the Dauphine),’ he said. ‘I had only done 19, which was less than I’d done before at this point. That was a conscious decision to try to come in fresher, especially when I’ll be going into the Vuelta, if everything goes to plan.’