For the second time in three years Chris Froome is set to ride through the streets of Paris in the yellow jersey of the Tour de France winner but it was a close-run thing, far too close for comfort.
Saturday’s brief mountain stage to this finish was intended to act as a grandstand for a final showdown and a late attack from Froome’s closest challenger, Nairo Quintana, produced an epic pursuit match in the final 10km, with Froome hanging on to the yellow jersey by 1min 12sec in the climactic finish all had hoped for. He also won the King of the Mountains jersey, the first Briton to do so since Robert Millar in 1984.
Froome had dropped 32sec to Quintana on the mountain top finish the day before at La Toussuire but on the other side of the Grandes Rousses chain – in Isère rather than Savoie – this was a far more serious challenge. Quintana and his Movistar team left their collective effort late – perhaps too late – and Froome was fortunate to have his team-mates Wouter Poels and Richie Porte in attendance to set the pace, as the Sky trio fought manfully to keep Quintana’s advantage within reasonable proportions. “That was unbelievably hard. Chris was not on his best day,” said Porte.
The 21 hairpins rising in a vertiginous staircase to an altitude of 1,850m up a rock face above the Romanche valley make up the Tour’s greatest set-piece ascent, and forcing the riders to climb the Alpe 24 hours before the finish in Paris lent it a whole new dimension.
The camper vans and cars from all over Europe began arriving several days before the Tour drew near; by Saturday morning the entire resort resembled a vast multinational campsite and the various nations – Ireland, Holland, Wales – had occupied their corners, gazebos and sound systems precariously poised in something akin to a near vertical, two-wheel fixed Glastonbury festival.
The first man to the top was France’s Thibaut Pinot, who finally achieved the stage win he had been hunting since his overall challenge stalled in the Pyrenees. Pinot had been outwitted by Steve Cummings a week earlier in Mende, and had fallen off on Wednesday with stage victory within reach at Pra Loup. With Quintana unleashed behind him it was no surprise to see him look over his shoulder on the final corner and the little Colombian was a mere 18sec behind – less than the length of the finish straight – when Pinot landed the biggest victory of his career.
Quintana attacked twice on the early slopes of the Alpe before finally pulling clear of Froome’s group with 9km remaining, just as the crowd began to thicken into an almost impenetrable mass where the riders struggled to see the road ahead through the sheer weight of bodies. The gap opened slowly – just as it had the previous day – but this time Froome was visibly struggling to hang on to his team-mates. His riding style is so contorted that he always looks in pain; this time he probably was.
Up ahead Quintana linked up with his team-mate Winner Anacona, who had dropped back from an earlier escape in a classic piece of team tactics and made the pace for his fellow Colombian until his strength gave out. Gradually, agonisingly, the gap opened but never at a sufficient rate to suggest Froome might lose the Tour unless he truly hit crisis point.
Quintana accelerated at 5km to go, sprinting away from Anacona, but with the gap at about a minute, there was little he could do other than hope that Froome might crack. Behind, Poels broke first, 5km out, but Porte’s strength held until within sight of the final kilometre through the ski resort, where Froome sprinted, crossing the line 1:20 behind Quintana, who earned a 6sec time bonus for his second place on the stage. With the Briton was Quintana’s team-mate Alejandro Valverde, who clinched the third slot on the podium, as both Vincenzo Nibali and Alberto Contador ceded more time.
Earlier Froome had to ward off an initial attack from Movistar high on the Col du Croix de Fer, where Valverde and Quintana managed to isolate him from all his team-mates apart from Porte, but curiously, they were unwilling to press home their advantage, and permitted Froome’s team-mates, including Geraint Thomas, to join up, putting Froome in a position of some strength before they hit the final, decisive climb out of the Romanche valley.
Froome confessed he had been under the weather since the second rest day on Tuesday, suffering with a cough, although he was at pains to add that he had needed no Therapeutic Use Exemption drugs to treat it. On the Alpe he admitted there were moments where he felt “this could go the other way. There were a few times when I thought it was going to be tough. I was getting time checks every few minutes and it was comforting to see they weren’t jumping up by 30 seconds at a time, but by 5 to 10sec which was manageable. I was on my absolute limit. I felt I was dying a thousand deaths but being with my team-mates meant I had something left for the final kilometre when I was on my own.”
Much of this Tour has resembled a two-wheeled version of catenaccio, and even when Quintana was finally unleashed, Sky’s domestiques again performed their role to perfection.
For the second day in a row Froome was the victim of at least one incident in which he was spat at from the roadside. On the final climb a man clad in polka-dot kit directed spittle at the yellow jersey, who turned round to look at his assailant before continuing on his way.
Winning a second Tour de France is so rare that it marks the point where a cyclist joins the pantheon of greats. The figures – human and numerical – speak for themselves. Since the second world war four men have won five Tours, not including the disgraced Lance Armstrong, namely Bernard Hinault, Eddy Merckx, Jacques Anquetil and Miguel Indurain. Two – Greg LeMond and Louison Bobet – have taken three but only a further three, Fausto Coppi, Alberto Contador, Bernard Thévenet and Laurent Fignon, have managed two.
Froome will join those names on Sunday, after a Tour in which he and Sky had looked in almost total control until the very last mountain.
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