Chris Froome, despite releasing a limited amount of his power data, believes he and Team Sky can never completely win over those who question the legality of his displays. Speaking after he retained the yellow jersey on Wednesday, Froome said: “I’d imagine the data will never be enough. There are a lot of people out there who have made up their minds and, whatever information we release, that’s not going to change their opinions.”
“If people want to truly understand what I’m capable of doing on a bike they’d have to have all my power data, all my files, racing and training,” added the Tour de France leader. “But for Team Sky that would mean giving away our training programmes. Guys like Tim Kerrison have spent years developing these programmes. It’s crazy for us to just give it away to teams that haven’t made that investment. But I’m happy to surrender everything to the right bodies on the basis that all other teams did the same.”
Here Froome reinforced his position at the head of the standings after the rider lying third overall, Tejay van Garderen, abandoned due to illness, and a key rival in Alberto Contador lost 2min 17sec due to a crash. The Sky leader is now only three Alpine stages away from winning his second Tour in three years and he said that he felt rivals such as Alberto Contador, Nairo Quintana – who remains second overall – and the 2014 winner Vincenzo Nibali were beginning to look increasingly short of options.
“I wouldn’t say they are desperate but you can see they are taking bigger risks. I was surprised to see [overall contenders] jumping around with 50 or 60 kilometres to go. You get the feeling they are taking an all-or-nothing approach at this stage.” Contador was among the early attackers, while Nibali put pressure on Froome on the key descent before the finish. Quintana made several attempts to dislodge the race leader, who had little trouble keeping the Colombian under control.
