Brailsford hails dynamic duo and apologises for outburst
After being accidentally peppersprayed by the French police on Tuesday, Chris Froome found himself accidentally knocked off his bike by a gendarme after the finish yesterday. It never rains but it pours for the four-time champion.
Froome – who was apparently mistaken for a fan in his rain jacket while riding back to his team bus from the summit – did not let on to reporters what had happened. Instead, he praised the performance of his team-mate Geraint Thomas, admitting he was the stronger rider and vowing to work with him for the rest of the race. It was only later, when a fan video of the aftermath of his clash with the gendarme appeared on social media, that anyone realised that Froome had just been knocked over.
Sir Dave Brailsford, Team Sky’s principal, praised Froome’s reaction to his disappointment, adding that the way he and Thomas have worked together was deserving of a huge amount of credit.
“I know it’s an interesting dynamic, but these two guys deserve so much credit for the way they have handled themselves,” Brailsford said.
“I haven’t had to manage them at all – they have worked it out for themselves, and that takes some doing. But they are so experienced now, they don’t get distracted by anything.”
Froome and Thomas have had to contend with daily booing. Froome arrived having just been cleared of any wrongdoing following a ninemonth investigation into his use of the asthma drug salbutamol.
An already sceptical French public have given him a torrid time, with fans on Alpe d’huez pushing and shoving and spitting at him. Throughout, both he and Thomas have shown dignity, declining to
get angry, which is more than can be said for their team principal.
Brailsford was fiercely critical of David Lappartient, who runs world cycling, earlier in this Tour. Then on Monday he described the abuse being meted out to his team as a French cultural phenomenon.
Brailsford apologised for those remarks yesterday, insisting it was not his intention to insult a nation.
“I’m a Francophile,” he said. “I think anybody who knows me knows that wasn’t my intention, but I was pretty agitated about the attention we were getting. Of course I don’t believe that spitting is a French cultural thing, but my point was that we only get that kind of thing at the Tour de France.”
Brailsford concluded by warning that it would be dangerous to write off Froome, whatever he says. But he conceded that such was Thomas’s form, it would be difficult for anyone else to come back now.
“You can never write Chris off,” Brailsford said. “His powers of recovery are fantastic. We’ve seen him do it time and time again.
“[But] given the intensity of the race, and the steeper gradients, [Thomas] coming third here may prove just as valuable, if not more so, than those stage wins [at La Rosiere and Alpe d’huez].”