With Chris Froome’s record-breaking win at the final stage of the Tour de France on July 24, 21st Century Fox-sponsored Team Sky once again delivered on its reputation as the U.K.’s premier professional cycling team.
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And Wiggins also tipped Froome to emulate his achievement of winning the Tour and Olympic road time trial in the same year at the Rio Games next month.
The Team Sky rider survived two crashes and even a jog up a mountain road to add to his 2013 and 2015 triumphs to become the first rider to retain his title since Miguel Indurain in 1995.
The Briton’s first two titles were accompanied by tense moments with some spectators, while questions about cycling’s doping past were never far away.
Prudential RideLondon-Surrey Classic Race Director Mick Bennett said: “We are thrilled to have Tour de France champion Chris Froome riding for Team Sky at this year’s Prudential RideLondon-Surrey Classic”.
This was his first Tour de France stage win.
German Greipel, also the victor in Paris 12 months ago, pipped the late-charging world champion Peter Sagan to the line in the traditional sprint on the Champs-Elysees after racing clear of Norway’s Alexander Kristoff on the run-in.
Apart from crashes at the Mont Ventoux and in the penultimate Alpine stage, the 31-year-old Froome enjoyed a very quiet Tour.
“I’ve won it three times and I can categorically say the novelty is not wearing off”.
The most freakish sight of the whole Tour – Froome jogging towards the finish line on Stage 12 after Richie Porte crashed into a motorbike and brought Froome and Bauke Mollema down with him.
While other big riders of his generation like Alberto Contador and Vincenzo Nibali have all three Grand Tours – the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France and the Spanish Vuelta – Froome plans to keep his focus on the Tour. I hope I can do that next year.
These post-Tour exhibition races shouldn’t put too much strain on a exhausted body, though after last year’s Tour Froome admitted that he did too many.
Having won the bronze medal in the Olympic time trial at the London Olympics four years ago, Froome will be looking to improve on that achievement in Brazil.
News accounts say the French are still pining for another tour victor.
“I think as this race has gone on people have got to me know me a little bit better, know my character a little bit better”, he said. The strength of Team Sky was critical, with Froome particularly indebted to the performance of Dutchman Wout Poels.
“It looks like next weekend I’m going to Ride London on Sunday as a one-day race before we fly as a team to Rio”, he said.
Superior in descent and on the flat, Froome then crushed all the rest on the 13th stage time-trial and took his gap out to minutes rather than seconds.
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“That’s just the way I am, I’m not necessarily a hugely outgoing kind of guy”.
