Froome built his success on an impressively strong Team Sky, arguably the best assembled in recent Tour history, being able to rely on domestique de luxe Wouter Poels in the mountains. “I’ve always had my team-mates around me”. This race was even tougher (than his previous victories). That [2012] Tour in particular, I got stronger in the third week and won that last time trial.
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Froome, victor of the tour in 2013 and 2015, took the yellow jersey by stage 8 and faced little trouble from the pack behind on the overall classification.
Yet that’s not to say this was a Tour without challenges or drama for the Kenyan born rider – far from it.
Quintana claimed he was suffering from an allergy but his baffling contentment at finishing third – his worst Tour finish – spoke volumes.
Adam Yates was also a revelation as the 23-year-old Briton came fourth and won the young rider s white jersey competition.
French soldiers patrol at Louvre museum and the Pyramid prior to the twenty-first stage of the Tour de France cycling race over 113 kilometers (70.2 miles) with start in Chantilly and finish in Paris, France, Sunday, July 24, 2016.
And he will now have his eyes set on five-time winners Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Jacques Anquetil and Indurain.
After four exciting days of racing in the Alps, Chris Froome emerged victorious in Paris for the third win of his career.
Allegations of performance-enhancing drug use have been flung at Froome and Team Sky during the British outfit’s continued dominance of the prestigious Grand Tour event, but Wiggins feels the apparent resentment toward the relative newcomers has softened in 2016.
Donned in his yellow jersey, along with King of the Mountains victor Rafal Majka (Tinkoff) in his polka-dots, to absolutely no-one’s surprise Froome took victory at the Nartour Criterium in Aalst, Belgium. First, three-time time trial world champion Tony Martin abandoned the race due to a left-knee injury, then Marcel Kittel, the sprinter who won Stage 4, had a mechanical problem and dropped behind as he was forced to change bikes.
That should only help him as he tries to master the unpredictability of a one-day race.
Australian Chloe Hosking had earlier won the women’s La Course by Tour de France, the annual curtain-rasier to the final men’s stage.
Many fans and pundits have praised the way Sky have ridden this year’s Tour; last year they were singled out for being negative and bringing a ‘boring’ style But this year they took on all types of terrain and conquered them, and Thomas was integral to that.
The first saw Yates knocked off his bike by an inflatable arch 1km from the finish of the seventh stage.
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Being forced to run up the Mont Ventoux mid-Tour when his bike was wrecked and he fell in a crash proved, said Froome, how hungry he was for another victory in the Tour.
