A little poetic licence has always been part of the charm of the Tour de France – the accounts of Eugene Christophe’s broken forks in 1913, for instance, or Jacques Anquetil’s rest-day méchoui in 1964 – but Chris Froome felt moved to issue a correction to the accepted version of events at last year’s race when he met the press on Friday afternoon in Utrecht.
Froome crashed out of the Tour on the same day the peloton tackled the cobblestones of Paris-Roubaix en route to Arenberg, leading to the general consensus that, of the four principal contenders for overall victory this time out, he is the one most likely to concede ground on the trek over the pavé on stage 4.
Asked if he was concerned about the prospects of facing into the same terrain on Tuesday, the Team Sky rider was careful to point out that he had left the Tour before he even reached the first sector of cobbles a year ago.
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“I’d like to just set the record straight for last year: it wasn’t the cobbles that put me out of last year’s race, I didn’t even see a cobble, I didn’t make it that far,” Froome said, half in jest. “With the Classics undercurrent we’ve got in this team, I’m going to be more than protected for the cobbles, but I’ve already been out there to look at them and I’m actually quite looking forward to them.”
If it wasn’t the pavé, then perhaps it was Froome’s apparent jitters that ended his hopes of defending his Tour title in 2014. He crashed three times in two successive days before abandoning last year, including what seemed a wholly avoidable spill at low speed in the opening kilometres of stage 4.
Froome had already endured a tense build-up to the race. Following as a setback at the Critérium du Dauphiné, he faced questions about his use of a therapeutic use exemption during his victory at the Tour de Romandie and about Bradley Wiggins’ absence from Sky’s selection for a Tour that began in Yorkshire.
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