In the short term Chris Froome expects to start next Sunday’s Ride London Classic on his way to the Olympic Games, while in the long term he intends to return to the Tour de France until he is deep into his 30s, raising the possibility he will aim to match the likes of Eddy Merckx and Bernard Hinault on five wins. “I will keep coming back for the next five or six years to give it my best shot, to fight for victory again. I’ve won three and I can’t say the novelty is wearing off.
“It’s an amazing feeling of relief now the race is done and dusted, just amazing, I feel as if I could have won my first Tour,” Froome said after crossing the finish line here to put his third Tour de France victory in the bag with only the stage on the Champs Élysées on Sunday to come. Froome said that reaching Morzine with four of his team-mates clustered around him was “incredible”, adding: “They have been here all through the Tour, every step of the way, I couldn’t have asked for more.”
“It feels like it has been a rollercoaster. There have been amazing moments when we took on the race and made the racing – the descent of the Peyresourde, the stage in the crosswinds, sprinting with Peter Sagan. You can’t script moments like that. It was bike racing at its best and it’s incredible to have shaped the Tour in that way.”
Froome said he did not believe that the Tour might be lost when he fell on a white line on a slippery descent on Friday. “There was never any doubt. But yesterday evening I was so mentally drained, I slept incredibly well in spite of being sore. Something like that can turn the race around in the blink of an eye. If I hadn’t had that team support I might have lost a minute or two, I’d have had to chase all the way to the finish alone and it could have been a very different scenario.”
As a result, the slippery descent to the finish here was stressful, the 31-year-old said, while conceding that with a four-minute advantage he at least knew he could ride at his own pace. “It’s there at the back of your mind but you know if any rivals go for it they will have to take risks and you’ve got four minutes, so you can go at your own pace and pick your own lines. I think in that weather no one wanted to take risks; they saw what happened on Friday when everyone started taking risks and there were crashes everywhere.”
In fourth place, 4min 46sec behind Froome is 23-year-old Adam Yates, who could well prove a rival for Froome in future after becoming the first British cyclist to win the white jersey of the best under-25 rider. Asked if he felt he could win the Tour in future, the Bury racer said: “That’s hard to say, but I will keep working hard and will be back to try and go one step further. I’ll take fourth in the Tour de France, I’m pretty happy with that.”
Yates said it had been virtually impossible for any of Froome’s rivals to attack due to the difficult weather conditions during the stage. “It was so dangerous, you could risk everything and not make any time up. This is the first grand tour I’ve ridden for the overall standings, I’ve had one bad day and I managed that quite well. It’s all about gaining experience, suffering but not losing concentration when you are tired.”
Froome’s victory was hailed by the Tour organiser Christian Prudhomme, who said that he felt the race had seen, “the same Froome but different” over the three weeks. “When he attacked on the descent from the Peyresourde and followed Peter Sagan on the stage to Montpellier, one made for the sprinters, those were big surprises for me. We saw the same Team Sky as before, as powerful as ever, like a Paris Saint-Germain of cycling.”
