Against a Trouble Sky
Froome brought the boom, then put my room between him and his rivals
Media, skeptics, and won’t-get-fooled-again fans are all questioning Sky’s performance in the Tour. In the back channels with industry insiders, it’s the chatter too. As my friend and World Champ Russie said on Facebook, we either witnesses to a new human performance benchmark or the impossible. With Sky refusing to discuss how they’ve achieved this amazing breakthrough after hiring a questionable doctor, I’m expecting a Release Your Inner Froome, how to achieve a breakthrough performance book by the fall. That or Froome Juice powders and chews. Both tagged with 6.4w/kg for 22min.
I’m at a media event with a company who has a huge stake in the Tour and the show must go on. While watched with an eyebrow raised. Busy riding bikes and getting products pitched, I don’t have bandwidth to write much more than a brief editorial post. The editors at Outside Online said it though, here in this article.
We expected Chris Froome, the 28-year-old Kenyan-born and odds-on Tour de France favorite, to come out swinging in the mountains, but none of us expected a win as brilliant as his victory on Stage 8. After leaving the pace-setting to his Team Sky lieutenant Richie Porte, Froome rode to the front on the day’s final climb—at 7.8 km, s relatively short, but very steep, Pyrenean ascent—and attacked with 5k to go, quickly distancing the only non-Sky rider in the lead group, Nairo Alexander Quintana. With Quintana cracked, a resurgent Alejandro Valverde clawed his way back to finish as Froome’s top challenger, 1:08 down, an eternity for a climb of that distance.
Word. After that, he put nearly 4 minutes into his rivals in the TT. Follow Science of Sport for more healthy skepticism and I’m watching as much of the Tour as I can between rides and pitches.