THREE AND EASY FOR FROOME...
Third win puts Chris up with greats
Chris Froome crosses the line in Paris with his Team Sky team-mates after joining the elite club of three-time Tour de France winners
Slowly, he is being appreciated as warmly as his talent warrants
CHRIS FROOME smiled and linked hands on shoulders, nine abreast, with the Sky team-mates who had helped him to the finish line as a British sporting hero under the Arc de Triomphe.
His journey had taken him most of the way through a trial of 2,186 miles, 666 towns, 35 French departments and four countries, and the worries of defending a lead had vanished at last.
Earlier in the afternoon he had sipped a beer on that cobbled path of champions around Chateau de Chantilly during the final stage of the Tour — by custom an unchallenged ceremonial for the man in yellow.
Shame it wasn’t London Pride, but Leffe Blond. Yet whatever the brew, it was fully deserved by the 31-year-old Kenya-born Briton who was riding to victory.
Will he ever supplant the quirky Sir Bradley Wiggins or the humble Sir Chris Hoy as the most cherished of all our cycling superstars?
Wiggins deserved every hosanna that came his way, not least having ended our 99-year wait for Britain’s first Tour de France success. But the context provided by Wiggins’ achievements now serves to add lines of glory to the man who arrived in central Paris, still warm in the early evening sun, to take the title for the third time in four years.
He was assuredly already Britain’s finest grand tour rider. But here he joined the pantheon of wider worlds. Greg LeMond, Louison Bobet and Philippe Thys as the only other thrice winners. Only Miguel Indurain, Bernard Hinault, Eddy Merckx and Jacques Anquetil (all with five) stand ahead of him.
Froome has four or five more years of top form ahead. He could possibly eclipse even those luminaries. But before then another moment of sporting history beckons — the road race and time-trials at the Rio Olympics, both of which he could win.
Rio’s hilly courses are suited to the strengths of this narrow-shouldered, thin-hipped stick of a power machine. Tour de France and double gold in one glorious summer?
‘That would be phenomenal,’ he said, pondering this question as carefully as every other.
‘The Olympics is more of a gamble being a one-day race. The teams are small so the road race is extremely hard to judge tactically. It is not as if you can put eight guys in front of you, but with the team we’ve got we can be extremely competitive there.’
He is now confident of his versatility, feeling maturity has allowed him to race these last few weeks the way he has. Yes, he is still a demon when in his hilly stride, but how mightily he impressed in taking the yellow jersey with a nerveless descent of Col de Peyresourde during stage eight. He then notably attacked in crosswinds entering Montpellier.
His sonatas were as tuneful as his symphonies. And the result was a crushing 4min 5sec win over Frenchman Romain Bardet.
It was a one-sided Tour, though not without incident. History will no doubt recall him running up Mont Ventoux until he got hold of a replacement bike. Pure theatre for us. Total dedication by him.
He also survived a fall in the rain on Friday and picked his way through the water carefully enough on Saturday’s final Alpine stage. Job done. Team Sky boss Sir Dave Brailsford talked about Froome’s minute attention to detail going as far as sending all his team a text message each evening. Now, he will be sharing with them the winner’s £400,000 cheque.
That will not be a great hardship, I imagine, when you earn £4million a year, the biggest pay-packet — or near enough — in the world of cycling.
Only slowly, though, is Froome starting to be appreciated as warmly as his talent warrants.
He is reserved but intelligent. One problem is that he is perceived as a hybrid Brit. He says not. And behind an accent that betrays the South African education he received, he can claim significant links to Britain.
His mother’s family were drawn to Kenya’s coffee plantations from Tetbury, Gloucester, in the early years of the last century.
His maternal grandfather fought for the British in the Second World War and against the Mau Mau in the Kenya Emergency of the 1950s. And his own father was an England Under-19 hockey international.
The French, appreciating how he has brushed up on the language, have not spat at him or thrown urine at him this Tour as they had in his previous wins.
He feels, too, that in Britain the mood is changing. ‘As the race has gone on, people have got to know my character a little better,’ he said. ‘People have found it hard to relate to me in the past. I am not hugely outgoing, but if anything my true colours are coming out.’
Guarding the course for the first time, in addition to thousands of regular officers and soldiers, were 400 men whose motto is: ‘To Save Lives Without Regards To One’s Own’ — the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group, established after the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre.
Thankfully, the security provisions did their job in the capital of a benighted France in a fearful Europe. And the fans stood 10 deep as the cavalcade of cars and whistles and flashing lights heralded the arrival of the bikes in the City of Lights.
An hour or so later, Froome was crossing the line before hugging his wife Michelle and son Kellan who, at eight months, thinks this is dad’s first Tour win.
Sitting at the back of the media centre as Froome was winning was Floyd Landis, doping cheat. So we all turned our eyes, with hope, to the man wearing the yellow jersey for the 44th day of his burgeoning life.