Froome and Wiggins both ABANDON Road World Championships as Rain-Affected Race is Won by Portugal's Rui Costa
By Daily Mail, 29 September 2013
Chris Froome’s bid to win the world road race title ended in Florence in atrocious conditions that mirrored a miserable British team performance. Not one of the eight riders finished the race, leaving the team with only one medal from the championships — Sir Bradley Wiggins’s silver in Wednesday’s time trial.
On Sunday, Wiggins was a shadow of the rider who finished second to Tony Martin in midweek, languishing at the back and pulling out with 128km still to race.
Froome, who withdrew 50km later — well before the rain-lashed race reached its climax with Rui Costa of Portugal outsprinting Spain’s Joaquim Rodriguez — confessed to being ‘very disappointed, especially after training so hard and making it such a big objective.’
Calm before the storm: Chris Froome was forced to pull out of the road race at the World Championships
The Tour de France winner added that he was not helped by the lack of team support: ‘The way we were working, everyone was here to support me. Cav (Mark Cavendish) and Luke (Rowe) did a great job bringing us to the circuit but once we got there it just got blown to pieces and we started losing people all over the place with crashes, punctures — pretty soon it was only me and Geraint (Thomas) left.’
Asked if Wiggins had done a single turn at the front, Thomas said: ‘Not that I saw. The only two guys who actually did anything on the Great Britain side were Cav and Luke. They were the only ones who pulled their weight, myself included.’
Rod Ellingworth, the team’s coach, did not mince words: ‘They are all disappointed and they need to be. They didn’t show what they are capable of.’
Chaotic: Several riders crashed out before the end
Ellingworth, who masterminded Cavendish’s world title win in 2011, questioned the team spirit: ‘A lot of people were talking the talk beforehand and didn’t see it through. No excuses, each and every one of them underperformed.
‘Froomey was the leader, but when he turns round with six or seven laps to go and nobody’s there, that’s the issue.’
Wiggins’ problems, said Ellingworth, were similar to those in the Giro d’Italia in May, where he seemed to lose ground on the wet descents. ‘From what I could see, he just couldn’t go downhill again, same as in the Giro.’
Ellingworth rejected the suggestion that Wiggins is not a team player: ‘If it had been dry, he’d have been OK. But Chris wasn’t good in this weather either. They will look in the mirror and think they didn’t do a very good job.’
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