As the Tour de France nears its climax at l’Alpe d’Huez, the stress is mounting. Chris Froome was involved in an angry encounter with the 2014 Tour winner, Vincenzo Nibali, after the finish and bitterly criticised the Italian, who he felt had made his stage-winning move on the Col du Croix de Fer just as he made the briefest of halts at the roadside to unblock a piece of stone from his back wheel brake callipers.
“I felt as if my mechanical provoked his attack,” said Froome, who lost 30sec on the final climb to his closest rival, Nairo Quintana, but retained the yellow jersey 48 hours from Sunday’s finish in Paris.
Froome described Nibali’s action as “very unsportsmanlike and not what the Tour de France is all about. It seemed like Nibali had all the climb to attack, and chose the moment when I had a mechanical,” and added: “I told him just what I thought of him.” His issue, he explained, was not that Nibali would gain time unfairly – the Italian was no threat overall – but that his move would provoke others to react, thereby putting him in difficulty.
Nibali, meanwhile, confirmed that he had been on the receiving end of Froome’s ire but said he had not responded. “I don’t deserve the words he said, they are too hard, and not right to say. He was very upset with me and I don’t understand his problem. “When the race is going on, there are problems, like when Contador crashed the other day. Before judging, you need to think and reflect. He attacked me, I could have stood there and argued, but it wouldn’t have changed anything.”
Froome said he had not seen a bystander spit at him, although television cameras recorded the incident 1.6km from the finish, but he condemned the act, coming as it did after urine was thrown at the yellow jersey last Saturday. “That’s appalling behaviour. Primarily we’re human beings and then we’re sportsmen. People need to remember that. You can’t come to a bike race to spit at someone, or to punch them or to throw urine at them. That’s not acceptable.”
In another episode earlier in the stage, a spectator clearly made an obscene gesture to Froome as he rode past and Friday’s succession of incidents all created a tense buildup to Saturday’s brief mountain stage to l’Alpe d’Huez. The race leader said he cannot wait for the Tour’s most renowned finish but even so that he is nervous about what may await him at a venue where matters get tense even in Tours far quieter than this one.
“Every rider is a little bit on tiptoes – a little bit on edge about what is going to happen up on that climb. We know crowds have been up there already partying for a couple of nights. By the time we arrive up there tomorrow they’ll be fully into it. Everyone’s a bit nervous about getting through there.
“Hopefully it won’t be too different to last time. It’s a great atmosphere up on the climb and the race isn’t going to be affected in any way.”
