Was this the day champion fell back to ranks?

Four-time winner’s grip on the Tour has been weakened after his counter-attack failed

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 team-mate or the law of time that breaks even the most stubborn champions.

An impresario looking down from a French Alp would probably argue 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 is why Froome dropped to third in the general classification after stage 17, but there was a sense of an authorial hand writing him out of this year’s picture.

Froome, said the Eurosport commentary team, “has a new reality to face. As things stand, he is a domestique to Geraint Thomas on this Tour de France”.

Further analysis by Brian Smith in Eurosport’s tactics room picked out the moment Froome’s head went down as Thomas attacked his own attackers further up the hill.

Unless the four-time champion can summon untold reserves before the weekend, a changing of the guard will be traced to the afternoon when Froome’s attempted counter-attack petered out and Thomas extended his lead to 1min 59sec by standing up to Tom Dumoulin, who is one back from the yellow jersey.

If Froome’s hold on cycling’s greatest contest is broken over the next four days, he will return 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 would become Thomas’s workhorse not for political reasons but because his own grip on power had been lost.

In Thomas’s cautious responses during the post-race questioning, you could see the implications sinking in. But nor could he 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 think he’s still up there.”

So who were Thomas’s main rivals now? He said: “Obviously 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 team-mate. But yeah, those two.”

“I think he’s still up there,” was the most poignant of those remarks, though Thomas also had some comfort for Froome: “He’s a fighter, I’m sure he’ll keep fighting all the way.”

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 the UCI’S decision three-and-a-half weeks ago 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 his asthma drug case a “blow” to the World Anti-doping Agency’s standing. Cycling’s governing body, the UCI, elected not to

‘I think he’s still up there,’ was the most poignant of those remarks from Thomas

proceed against Froome for a high level of salbutamol after Wada advised there had been no breach of the rule.

“The question is whether justice was truly served or did a star get an undeserved break,” Tygart told the BBC. “Unfortunately it’s another blow to the perceived credibility of the global anti-doping movement.” Tygart, who helped expose Lance Armstrong as a drug cheat, did, however, say Froome had been stuck with a “worst-case scenario”. He said: “Athletes should not be accused or it be inferred that they’re not clean until proven through the established process, and that didn’t happen here – and he deserves the benefit of that presumption of innocence.”

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.”

Imagining the turmoil around a fifth Froome triumph is hardly difficult. A less complicated vision of him chasing home Thomas in a servant’s role is doubtless more to France’s liking. Either way, Team Sky know there is no love waiting for them on the Champs-elysees.