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Froome Tour de France Special as Briton Closes in on Glory
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Racing for victory: Chris Froome hopes to become Britain's second consecutive Tour de France winner
Daily Mail UKHigh in a lavender-scented Alpine pass, a band of floppy-hatted British cycling enthusiasts proudly unfurl their Union Flags, uncork a bottle of lukewarm Cotes du Rhone, and gaze nervously back along the scorching Tarmac.
More than six minutes have elapsed since the first riders in today’s stage of the Tour de France flashed past, and they’re beginning to fear their man might have wilted in the 100-degree heat, or suffered some other unforeseen catastrophe.
Then, at last, the chasing pack comes into view and, to whoops of relief and cries of ‘Go, Froome Dog!’ the Brits raise a toast.
For, coasting along in the group, sporting the yellow jersey — clearly saving his legs for the final stages of this torturous 2,200-mile, three-week slog — is their new two-wheel hero.
Seemingly too tall for his bike, with coat-hanger shoulders and limbs like elongated spaghetti, Chris Froome is hardly elegant in the saddle. When he is hunched over the handlebars, even his own father likens him to ‘a praying mantis’.
Though he has a glamorous (and fiercely protective) blonde fiancée, Froome isn’t exactly super-cool, either — in contrast with Sir Bradley Wiggins, whom he has usurped this year as Team Sky’s No 1 rider.
Taciturn, clean-cut, and more comfortable when fly-fishing than at a celebrity-studded bash, he is the antithesis of the mutton-chopped Wiggins, with his Mod outfits, cheeky quips and rock-star friends.
When he presses the pedals full throttle, however, there is no doubting that Froome is Wiggins’ equal ... and then some.
His performances these past few days have been quite phenomenal, and he is now so far ahead that, unless he falls during today’s 78-mile stage — highly unlikely given the relatively gentle terrain — he will take Wiggins’ crown on Sunday evening, so becoming the second British Tour winner in succession.
Main man: Froome remains the overall race leader after the 19th stage
Popular figure: Froome's reputation continues to grow
That the two riders are said to loathe one another and have been described as the bitterest rivals in sport — their respective partners are also at daggers-drawn after an unseemly Twitter cat-fight during last year’s race — only adds spice to a remarkable story.
In due course we’ll return to the spat between the redoubtable Cath Wiggins and the equally ballsy Michelle Cound, who revealed the denouement to their unedifying feud when speaking to me this week.
Given that even the most knowledgeable British cycling fans I have met in France know so little about 28-year-old Froome, however, perhaps we should first explain his extraordinary rise to supremacy.
This week, when I asked him whether he regarded himself as truly British, Froome seemed slightly offended. ‘One hundred per cent, I feel British,’ he replied in what sounded like a Home Counties drawl. ‘I don’t know what else I’d be.’
It was reassuring to hear.
Though he was born in Kenya and schooled in South Africa, his grandparents were all British, as is his father, Clive, now a Johannesburg-based businessman.
His fiancée says the major influence in his life was his mother, Jane, and he was devastated when she died of cancer five years ago.
Bitter rival? Bradley Wiggins' relationship with Froome is not the strongest
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During one particularly gruelling stage of this year’s Tour, she told me, when Chris became separated from his team-mates and had to battle on alone for mile upon mile in the mountains, he spurred himself on by thinking of his mother, and how proud she would be of his efforts.
The daughter of coffee farmers who had emigrated from England, Jane Flatt, as she was, married Clive Froome after he moved to Kenya to run a travel business when he was in his 20s. They had three sons, Jonathan, now 36, Jeremy, 34, and Chris, and for many years lived happily and prosperously in Karen, a suburb north of Nairobi.
Their lifestyle was typical of many British-Kenyans.
They retained old traditions — eating roast beef for Sunday lunch and listening to the BBC World Service — but fully embraced the thrills of Africa. The brothers even kept a nest of snakes in the back garden. Chris had two pythons, named Rocky and Shandy.
The oldest two boys were sent to board at the prestigious Rugby School in Warwickshire, and qualified as chartered accountants. Jonathan now works in London for the Financial Conduct Authority, whilst Jeremy is the chief finance officer for a gold mine in Kenya.
Chris, who was also bright, might have followed them; but when he was a small boy his parents parted acrimoniously and his future was utterly transformed.
Close: Fiancee Michelle Cound dedicates much of her life to Froome
Whilst Clive started afresh in South Africa, where he is now remarried with a 13-year-old son, young Chris stayed in Kenya with his mother.
There was no chance of an expensive British public school education for him and life wasn’t easy.
His mother worked all hours as a physiotherapist to make ends meet
Chris earned pocket money by hawking avocados for a local farmer, carrying them in a pannier on his battered old BMX bike. Thus his love of cycling began.
The other key figure in Froome’s formative years was David Kinjah, a remarkable man who has, almost single-handedly, pioneered professional cycling in Kenya and has for many years run a biking club for poor children.
Keen to encourage her son’s passion, when Froome was 11 his mother enrolled him in the club and Kinjah became his mentor.
He recalls her saying: ‘This is my little boy Chris. He likes bicycles ... and he needs an outlet for his energy.’
‘There was no sense, then, that Chris would become a great rider,’ Kinjah said from Nairobi this week.
‘He wasn’t any better than a lot of kids. But he had something about him. You have to remember that Chris was the only white boy in a club for poor villagers, far away from his home, and he had to prove himself. But whilst others might have been intimated he got more and more determined.’
Competitive: Froome's passion for cycling began in Kenya, where he grew up
Kinjah recalls leading his group on rides of up to 125 miles, and though they should have been much too far for a boy of Froome’s age, he never gave up.
‘We would also do this crazy stuff, such as riding less than a metre behind big trucks doing 60mph on rutted roads — if you get close enough to them there is no wind, and the slipstream pulls you along. Chris loved it.’
Froome began serious road-racing in his teens, by which time he was at boarding school in South Africa. He didn’t turn professional until he was 22, dropping out of university to join a small South African team, then moving to Europe, where in 2009 his increasingly impressive performances landed him a dream contract with the wealthy Team Sky — though only as a humble ‘domestique’ or support-rider.
Team bosses knew he was ready to take over from Wiggins last summer, when he came second in the Tour, even though he was only in the race to help drive his superstar leader to victory by serving as a human windbreak and pacemaker. And when Wiggins pulled out of this year’s event — officially owing to a recurring knee injury, but possibly to avoid the indignity of being forced to make way for his understudy — Froome’s path was clear.
How has he improved so dramatically that he has looked a sure-fire winner virtually since the three-week race began?
The Cheater:
Sadly, though inevitably, in a sport forever tainted by the dark arts of Lance Armstrong, the suspicion is that he must be cheating, and he has faced a daily barrage of press questions about doping.
Suspicion: Lance Armstrong's cheating has damaged cycling's reputation and led some to doubt the achievements of other cyclists
Disgraced Cheater: Armstrong's antics have seriously damaged cycling's reputation
On all but one occasion, when he snapped angrily at his inquisitor, he has shrugged them off with customary politeness, but as ever his fiancée springs to his defence.
‘It makes me so angry,’ Michelle says. ‘Chris is a genuinely good person. He has such good morals. Plus, we are virtually inseparable when he’s not riding, so I would have to know. He can’t lie to me.’
Michelle and Froome began dating in 2011 after meeting through a mutual cycling friend, but in May last year, during one of their frequent FaceTime chats via the internet, he said he needed her with him all the time.
So, somewhat rashly, as she admits, she quit her successful IT career, sold her house, and moved into his modest little flat in Monaco (newly flush, by dint of Froome’s vastly improved contract as team leader, they have recently bought a bigger one overlooking the Mediterranean, in the same building as former Formula One star David Coulthard).
There, Michelle organises every aspect of his life, from his strictly-controlled diet to his diary. As he doesn’t have an agent or manager as yet, she fills those roles, too.
They plan to marry next year in a quiet ceremony. At their home she does all the cooking but when Chris proposed to her he brought her breakfast in bed before going down on one knee to pop the question.
‘He’s only tough when he’s racing,’ she smiles. ‘At other times he’s a real sweetie; so thoughtful and considerate. In fact, people can take advantage of him sometimes and I have to protect him from them.’
Focused: Froome is determined not to be second best
In Monaco they live quietly but during recent months their privacy has been repeatedly invaded by drug testers who call at the apartment unannounced asking for blood and urine samples. They swoop so often, says Michelle, that she has ‘set aside a separate bedroom’ where the checks can be done.
But barely two months after she moved in with Froome, however, Michelle — who declines to give her age, but says she’s ‘a few years older’ than him — found herself embroiled in the Twitter war.
It erupted after an extraordinary drama on a tough mountain stage of last summer’s Tour.
The team strategy was that Froome would keep pace with Wiggins, an inferior climber on the steep mountain roads, but sensing his chance to win the stage himself he suddenly forged ahead, only pulling back after receiving frantic orders from his bosses through an earpiece.
Frustrated that he had been deprived of his moment of glory, Michelle vented her feelings with a barbed tweet. Cath Wiggins responded by praising the other Sky riders for supporting her husband — but pointedly omitted Froome.
Michelle then sent out the vitriolic message which has gone down in cycling folklore: ‘If you want loyalty get a Froome dog — a quality I admire, though being taken advantage of by others.’
It quickly went viral and made world headlines. Cycling fans lapped it up and Chris got his new nickname — Froome Dog.
The Froome dog: The cyclist is particularly well known for his climbing ability
As they made clear at the victory ceremony in Paris the following Sunday, however, the soon-to-be-Sir Bradley and Lady Wiggins were not amused.
‘I had never actually had any contact before then with Brad and Cath, but when I saw them on the team bus they blanked me,’ Michelle recalls.
‘I’m a bit shy, so I just kind of left it, (but) there was a moment when I caught Cath’s eye, and I definitely caught a bit of an evil look.’
Michelle admitted that Froome and Wiggins never really got along.
‘Chris likes people who are transparent and don’t mince words. People who he doesn’t have to guess what’s going on in their heads. Wiggins is a bit of a mystery to him and he struggles with that.’
But that balmy evening last July, Wiggins milked every drop of the adulation, kissing the fabled golden trophy and draping a Union Jack around his neck to pedal along the Champs-Elysees with his seven-year-old son.
Star of the show: All of the attention was on Wiggins last year
Somewhere behind him, the runner-up waved briefly before drifting away to find Michelle, who felt ‘lost in the crowd and a bit lonely’ after being rebuffed. As always in sport, first was first and second was nowhere. The situation was repeated a few days later when Wiggins won the Olympic time trial at Hampton Court and Froome took bronze.
The next day, the only pictures in the paper were of Wiggins sitting on a gold throne: his British team-mate was nowhere to be seen.
But on Sunday, unless there’s a mishap, it will all be very different.
It will be >>> The Froome Dog’s day.
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