He called it quits on stage 9.
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Rui Costa finished 38 seconds behind the leader but produced an impressive sprint finish to narrowly pip Rafal Majka and cross the line in second.
“Obviously the disaster I had last Sunday is still a bit of a hard one to take, but the hardest days of the race are in front of us so hopefully I can make more time back and try to hit that podium in Paris”, said Porte.
There was more bad news for Alberto Contador, as the two-time race victor abandoned the race after suffering crashes and illness earlier in the week.
Eleventh on the stage, overall Froome maintains his 16-seconds advantage on Britain’s Adam Yates, lying second in a breakthrough France performance from the 23-year-old Yorkshireman.
The select group containing the challengers for the overall reformed, and next to chance his arm was Etixx-Quick Step’s Dan Martin, nowadays a resident of Andorra, who lay fourth overall this morning just 17 seconds behind Froome.
Valverde dropped off as the breakaway group’s lead, which had risen to two minutes, was under one minute.
South Africa’s Louis Meintjes is 39 seconds behind Yates in the race for the young riders’ white jersey, with Frenchman Warren Barguil nearly another two minutes further adrift.
That was the climb where Froome’s Sky team started to crank up the pressure in the peloton, which duly thinned steadily.
Quintana played down the significance of Froome’s time gain, but blamed himself for not reacting quickly enough to the Briton’s attack.
Dutch rider Tom Dumoulin won the ninth leg with a solo breakaway on the beyond-category finishing climb.
Having sweated through Spain, the riders were met by an autumnal downpour in Andorra.
Among those who couldn’t keep up with Froome on the final climb were French favorite Romain Bardet, top American hope Tejay van Garderen and Fabio Aru of Italy.
Quintana will be delighted to be so close to Froome given his previous rest-day deficits, but any other conclusions about the Colombian are hard to draw.
Day 10 will see cyclists take rest at Andorra, as they will be resuming with stage 10 of the race on July 12 from Escaldes-Engordany (Andorra) to Revel, covering a distance of 197km in the medium-mountain range.
But over three Pyrenean mountain stages, Quintana failed to attack Froome, leaving the Briton and his team perplexed.
“I thought over the top let me just give it a go and see what I can do on the descent – I’ll see if I can catch someone out”, said Froome.
“In the back of my mind I was waiting for his attack”, Froome said of Quintana.
Yates completed two grand tours, the Vuelta in 2014 and the Tour past year, aiming for stage wins, a way of racing that is different from riding for “GC” (general classification).
“Tactically, but also for morale and for the team”.
Froome was the stage victor when the Tour last scaled Ventoux’s barren, 1,909-meter (6,263-foot) peak in 2013. “Believe me, I did the best I can”. Team Sky had controlled the pace but when they had all been dropped and only Henao and Froome were left, Henao jumped. “It also looks like it will be a hot day, but this doesn’t bother me”.
“We’ve seen Chris attack, we’ve seen a couple of other skirmishes if you like, but as of yet it’s been a relatively compact race”, he said.
“At the end of the day there s only one team controlling this race, that s us”.
“I think Richie (Porte) was thinking the same thing”.
“I’ve said it a few times: I feel this is going to be the biggest battle of my career”, Froome said at the end of stage nine.
“I know him well, I rode in the (Sky) team”.
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“I wasn’t feeling so good but suddenly it all comes together”.
