Chris Froome may be a four-time winner of the Tour de France, but the Vuelta a España remains something of a white whale for the Sky rider, who has placed second overall three times in five appearances but never succeeded in carrying the red jersey to Madrid.
2017 marks the third time that Froome has attempted to win the Tour-Vuelta double, a feat only ever achieved by Jacques Anquetil and Bernard Hinault, and never since the Vuelta moved to its current, post-Tour slot on the calendar in 1995.
Froome responded to his – relative – struggles in the second week of this year’s Tour by pointing out that his 2017 preparation had been tailored to allow him to maintain his form into the August and September as part of his Vuelta bid. The team around him is perhaps the strongest supporting cast in the race, with Wout Poels, who missed the Tour, back at Froome’s side. Sky will even travel around Spain accompanied by what it calls a ‘Race hub’, namely a truck that expands into work spaces for the team’s staff. As ever, no expense has been spared by the British squad but, as Froome has discovered over the years, plans have a habit of going awry in late summer in Spain.
2011: 2nd overall, 13 seconds behind Juan José Cobo
Six years on, Juan José Cobo’s overall victory at the 2011 Vuelta a España is now viewed as something of an aberration – the ‘Bison’ was last seen in the colours of Turkish Continental outfit Torku Sekerspor in 2014 – but he had a considerably finer pedigree than the man who reached Madrid in second place overall. Cobo had won a stage and placed 10th at the Vuelta in 2009, after all. He had won the Tour of the Basque Country and been retroactively awarded a stage of the 2008 Tour de France. Chris Froome, by contrast, had seemed to come from nowhere.
That August, Froome’s two-year stint at Team Sky looked to be petering towards a forgettable conclusion. 45th overall at the Brixia Tour and 85th at the Tour de Pologne, he had done little to warrant inclusion in the squad for the forthcoming Vuelta, but when Lars Petter Nordhaug withdrew from consideration, Froome found himself on the start line in Benidorm. And so began the most sudden and startling transformation in modern cycling.
Froome caught everyone – his Sky team seemingly included – by surprise when he seized the overall lead after delivering what was, to that point, the time trial of his life in Salamanca on stage 10. His team leader Bradley Wiggins had been expected to move into the red jersey that afternoon, but instead it was a faintly confused Froome who clambered onto the podium after being the only rider to finish within a minute of Tony Martin. “I wasn't really expecting that,” Froome said. “I just had a fantastic day and somehow I've ended up in the leader’s jersey.”
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In later years, Sky manager Dave Brailsford would describe Froome as a “diamond in the rough”, but he scarcely seemed a precious commodity when he was delegated to ride for Wiggins on the next stage to Alto de la Manzaneda, where he surrendered the lead to his captain. When Cobo launched what proved the race-winning attack on the Angliru on stage 15, meanwhile, Froome was again pressed into Wiggins’ service, and only seemed to realise in the final two kilometres that he was, in fact, the stronger of the pair.
That hesitation – not to mention Sky’s gearing selection on the Angliru – would prove costly. In the final week, the Vuelta became a duel between Froome and Cobo. Froome claimed stage honours at Peña Cabarga, but he could not dislodge Cobo, and he reached Madrid a mere 13 seconds down.
According to David Walsh, the spike in Froome’s performance on that Vuelta was surprising enough for Sky’s medical staff to re-examine all of his blood samples from the previous two seasons. A week after the race finished, Sky announced that Froome had signed a new, three-year contract.
2012: 4th overall, 10:16 behind Alberto Contador
What a difference a year makes. Twelve months after inching towards the exit at Sky, Froome returned to the Vuelta as team leader at the end of a season that had yielded second place at the Tour de France and a bronze medal in the Olympic Games time trial. Froome had spent the Tour riding shotgun for Wiggins but, like at the 2011 Vuelta, the race had only underscored that he was a far more reliable option in the high mountains than his nominal captain.
Sky paid heed to the lessons of the Tour. They were already pencilling Froome in as team leader for the 2013 Tour and pushing Wiggins towards an ill-fated tilt at the Giro. The 2012 Vuelta, then, was an additional examination of Froome’s credentials before the line of succession was confirmed. In hindsight, with the exertions of the Tour and the Olympics in his legs, the race seemed a test of the limits of Froome’s endurance as much as a realistic attempt at overall victory.
Even so, Froome began the race well, performing strongly on uphill finishes at Eibar, Jaca and Collada de la Gallina. After the Pontevedra time trial on stage 11, he lay third overall, just 16 seconds behind Joaquim Rodriguez, but he faded thereafter, conceding clumps of time on successive days at Ancares, Lagos de Covadonga and Cuitu Negru.
By the time Alberto Contador turned the Vuelta on its head on the road to Fuente Dé on stage 17, Froome found himself almost 10 minutes down, and out of the hunt even for a podium place. The final week proved a slog, and Froome was distanced once again at Bola del Mundo, but he emerged from the ordeal in 4th place overall, 10:16 down on Contador, who had returned from a doping ban in late summer. In that light, the 2012 Vuelta was a most useful gauge, too, of the threat Contador might pose to Froome and Sky at the following year’s Tour.
2014: 2nd overall, 1:10
2015: DNS, stage 12
2016: 2nd overall, 1:23 behind Nairo Quintana
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