Not everything is how it looks and two stage wins in two days and the overall title at the Critérium du Dauphiné do not mean Chris Froome is at his very best quite yet. There is more to come, the 2013 Tour de France winner said, and with the critical final phase of the 2015 Tour still five weeks away, that is precisely as it should be.
“If I have to be honest, I’d say I’m not quite at my best,” Froome said. “I still have a lot of work to do. I’m exactly where I need to be. We have under three weeks to the Tour now. I still have one or two little things to touch on in term of preparation. Things are looking good.”
After the Dauphiné Froome was set to remain in the Alps for a few days, to look over some of the mountain stages that run from the Tour’s final Wednesday to Saturday and which will decide the race, as they did when he took the 2013 event.
The Dauphiné included one stage over a route identical to the Tour’s stage 17, from Digne to Pra-Loup, and also went over a new Tour climb, the Lacets de Montvernier, but there are two classic major ascents, the Col de la Croix de Fer and Col Galibier, which have not been climbed by the Tour since 2012 and 2011 respectively.
Froome’s season kicked off strongly, with a stage win and overall title at the Ruta del Sol in southern Spain, but illness then intervened and he was forced to miss the Tirreno-Adriatico stage race in March.
He did not show strongly at the Ardennes Classics in late April but shortly afterwards at the Tour de Romandie his form looked to be arriving as he rode to third place. That was followed by a three-week spell training at altitude, as is now the norm.
“I don’t know how Contador and Quintana are going but they’ll be ready just like Nibali will be,” Froome said. “Nibali has got the ability always to be at his best for the big races. However, until we start [the Tour], it’s difficult to say how everyone’s form really is.
“But it’s important to consider the route too. Look at the first part, until the first rest day [after nine days in the saddle]. There’s the time trial, the Dutch coast, the Mur de Huy, cobbles, the Mur de Bretagne and the team time trial.” Strong rides by Peter Kennaugh, Ian Stannard, Philip Deignan and the Dutchman Wout Poels make it clear his support riders in Team Sky are hitting form at the right time as well.
Froome is one of four favourites for the Tour and he was the second to show his hand after Alberto Contador took a close-run victory two weeks ago in the Giro d’Italia; the 2007 and 2009 Tour winner has since returned to altitude training in Livigno.
The third man on the list, Vincenzo Nibali, rode the Dauphiné with Froome and rode cagily apart from a couple of obvious displays of strength. It was uncannily similar to the way he raced the event in 2014 before winning the Tour.
The big absentee has been the fourth Tour contender, Nairo Quintana of Colombia, who won the Tirreno-Adriatico race in March and made a single outing on cobbled roads during the Belgian Classics with this year’s stage four of the Tour into Cambrai in mind.
But most recently Quintana has been preparing quietly at home in Colombia, as he did before performing sensationally well in the 2013 Tour.
The 2014 Giro d’Italia winner’s only race outing before Utrecht will be the Route du Sud, a four-day event in the south-west of France which starts on Thursday.
Contador will use it as his final pre-Tour warm-up as well and both men will be expected to shine on Saturday, when stage three crosses the immense Port de Balès climb en route to Bagnères-de-Luchon.
As every year, the runes after the Dauphiné make intriguing reading. The French climber Romain Bardet, sixth in last year’s Tour, and the sprinter Nacer Bouhanni – winner of two stages – both showed well but last year’s Tour runner-up, Jean-Christophe Péraud, lost more than 40 minutes and finished 31st. The African MTN-Qhubeka team figured strongly three weeks out from their Tour debut, taking the King of the Mountains prize with the Eritrean, Daniel Teklehaiminot.
Marcel Kittel, the Tour’s sprint king for the last two years, finally looks to have found race fitness.
He finished sixth in the Rund um Köln on Sunday, while the French will be closely following the fortunes of Thibaut Pinot, third in the Tour last year, who hones his form this week well away from the domestic spotlight by riding the Tour of Switzerland.
