It had been a crazy race up to that point, bizarre and intriguing and full of the unexpected. To understand how Froome performed this seemingly superhuman feat, you have to understand the context and what had happened in the preceding months.
The problem with great rides is that if you do them, there are question marks, and if you don’t . . . there are yet more questions. When Froome came into the Giro, half the press corps thought he shouldn’t be there because of the Salbutamol case hanging over him. Many others thought he was undercooked because he would surely have to hold something back for the Tour de France.
He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. Had he not won the Giro, everyone would have been saying, ‘Aha! So he’s now no longer got the stuff that won him four Grand Tours.’ Then he wins and people go, ‘Aha! He’s still clearly taking advantage; this must be questionable.’
Froome had crashed some days earlier, while on a recce of the course for a time trial in Jerusalem. And he looked in poor form there too. At that point, my heart really went out to him. Turns out he was running himself into form, because a few days later he skipped up Monte Zoncolan like a gazelle and won the stage. The press reaction was, ‘That’s amazing – or is it?’ The stage victory seemed to attract dark clouds of suspicion.
The next day he was dropped spectacularly and the speculation then was that he was finished, spent like a cheap firework. The focus moved on to Simon Yates, who had become the unexpected race leader. As Froome fell further behind, he seemed to be completely out of contention. His odds went down. One of my editors, Massi Adamo, asked me, ‘Do you think he can come back from this?’ Because he was way down, over three minutes behind in the general classification, I said, ‘It’s possible, but it’s unlikely.’ Massi put on €40 at 50-1 at that point. Then the day before the big stage – the now remarkable, historic stage – Massi doubled his money up. ‘I had a dream!’ he said. And of course sometimes, just sometimes, these come true.
Form is never constant. Class is, but form will waver, especially when you go deep on your approach to form, which is what Froomie was doing. He was striking a balance to enable him to defend his Tour de France title later in the year. You can overdo it, knock yourself back, go too deep too soon, just like Fabio Aru did on the same race. With Chris, it’s about balancing the form – famine to enjoy the feast. Carefully does it.
When Froome set off on that stage, he’d clearly got his legs back and his team were absolutely incredible – the way that they attacked was magnificent! I was lucky enough to be calling the race that day and you could see Team Sky strategising; putting the pressure on everybody before they put the hammer down with a blistering early pace. It looked like a suicide mission. ‘They’re making plans,’ I declared, but I admit there was an element of hope.
When Froome went off with 80km (50 miles) to go, we were thinking, he’s gone shit or bust. ‘Surely this is madness,’ I said on air. He’d been on the radio and he apparently said, ‘Come on, guys, this is it. We can do this. Let’s go, go, go.’ That absolute undiluted belief is the sign of a great rider, to my mind.
There were two climbs that he had to conquer, firstly the dirt track of the Finestre. It was an infernal tempo designed to hurt the likes of Tom Dumoulin. Simon Yates was dropped early and when it was down to a select few, Froome powered away. All this with the magnificent backdrop of a majestic snow-covered mountain on a gravel track that called to mind the great rides of Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali. If it wasn’t for the garish team kits and carbon bikes, you could imagine you’d been transported 60 or 70 years back in time.
If Froome’s performance up the Finestre was magnificent, he was about to outdo that achievement by an extraordinary descent, where he gained most of the time he won over the Dutchman. It’s incredible to think that there were once question marks about Froome’s descending and bike-handling skills. That descent off the Finestre was an absolute masterclass – beyond the scale of even the very best I’d seen till then.
Of course, it’s likely he was guided down by Nico Portal in the support car behind him, in the same way that a rally driver takes instructions from his co-driver. Properly researched and dialled into the mind, the instructions would’ve sounded like this: ‘Off camber, three left . . . warning, pinch point in 300m, 200m, 100m, pinch point . . . and accelerate.’ Even so, it took masterful bike craft to deliver such a descent – and he did.
The Finestre and the downhill dealt with, Froome then had to climb up to Bardonecchia, which he attacked in his familiarly awkward, high cadence, crabby style. And getting to the finish line he powered through, conscious of every second he could gain over Dumoulin. Dumoulin himself said that there was nothing more he could have done on the day: he’d given it his all and was proud of his performance despite losing over three minutes to Froome.
It was a stunning performance that also highlighted the military precision and organisation of Team Sky. Not only did his teammates put in the initial damage on the lower slopes of the Finestre, the level of planning from the management was immense. They had realised that if he was to make a break at 80km (50 miles) out, there was clearly no way he would be able to sustain the level of effort required without proper sustenance: energy bars, gels, drinks
