Froome, fresh from winning his third Tour, will ride in the road race and the individual time trial at the Rio Games.
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Halfway down an Alpine hill last Friday, Tour de France leader Chris Froome picked himself off the tarmac with a torn yellow jersey and a broken bicycle.
Chris Froome earned his third Tour de France title after a triumphant finish in Paris on Sunday.
Chris Froome finished with an advantage of 4 minutes, 5 seconds ahead of Romain Bardet of France..
Froome, already Britain’s only multiple-Tour victor, is now one of just eight men – not counting the disgraced Lance Armstrong -to have won three or more Tours, and will have his sights set on record five-time winners Jacques Anquetil, Miguel Indurain, Bernard Hinault and Eddy Merckx.
The stage was finally won by Lotto Soudal sprinter Andre Greipel with Froome safely crossing the line arm in arm with his team-mates. “My joy is enormous, for me and for the team, but I’m yet to realise what happened”.
“I definitely feel I’ve matured a lot as a bike rider over the past couple of seasons”, he said.
He performed the role impeccably, soldiering on despite injuring his ribs in a crash on the first stage – a repeat of his heroics in 2013, when he rode most of the Tour with a fractured pelvis. But several other British cyclists excelled this year in a race where they were a rarity not long ago. “Viva le Tour. Vive le France”.
“For now my focus is on the Tour de France, given it’s such a special race”, he said after the 20th stage, a 146.5-km mountain trek from Megeve won by Spain’s Ion Izagirre.
This year, Froome looked much more relaxed as the crowds seemingly warmed to the Kenyan-born rider.
All nine Team Sky riders made it to Paris in support of Chris Froome.
Froome finished runner-up to time trial specialist Tom Dumoulin in the first time trial, creating bigger gaps on all of his direct rivals with an impressive performance.
“This tour has obviously taken place against the backdrop of awful events in Nice and we pay our respect again to those who lost their lives”, Froome said of the recent incident in which a man killed 84 people when he drove a truck through a Bastille Day crowd on the seafront at the Riviera city.
“Although we haven’t won the team competition, we’ve had by far the strongest team in this race and I’m incredibly grateful for that”.
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Only four men – five-time winners Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault, Eddy Merckx and Miguel Indurain – now have more Tour victories than Froome. “I’d love to come back next year and fight for it again”.
