As he stood to leave the winner’s press conference, an hour or so after one of the most incredible grand tour stages in living memory, Chris Froome had one final thing to say.
“As I’ve said since the beginning of the race, there is a process in place to demonstrate I’ve done nothing wrong,” Froome said firmly, but politely. “I know I’ve done nothing wrong. And it’s just a matter of time until that is clear to everyone. Thank you.”
And with that, he was gone. To rest up ahead of tomorrow’s final test of the 101st Giro d’Italia, when he – and not his compatriot Simon Yates, who finally cracked completely after two wonderful weeks in pink – will attempt to become the first British winner in the race’s 109-year history.
It was the final word on another absolutely extraordinary day in this most extraordinary of races. But that he needed to say it at all was significant.
Cycling attracts a good deal of scepticism at the best of times. But when riders attack solo from 80 kilometres out, on the queen stage of a race, over a climb such as the Colle delle Finestre, and go on to win by three minutes, rising from fourth in the general classification to first, the scepticism increases commensurately.
When that rider in question is Froome – who is still trying to clear his name following an adverse analytical finding for the asthma drug salbutamol dating back to last September – well, social media tends to go into meltdown.
Froome had begun the day in fourth place, 3min 22sec behind Yates. He ended it leading by 40sec overall from Sunweb’s Tom Dumulin, who finished the stage fifth.
With just one stage of the race remaining, tomorrow’s 214km run from Susa to Cervinia, Froome stands on the brink of what would be an incredible comeback given his earlier travails in the race, which included a heavy crash in practice ahead of the prologue in Jerusalem.
Questions are inevitably going to be asked. It is important then, to concentrate on the facts, not the emotions. And then to analyse them.
And the facts are this: Team Sky clearly prepared meticulously for this stage. “We spent all day yesterday dissecting the stage and the plan was always for [Froome] to come good in this little block and the Finestre was always going to be the decisive climb,” team principal Sir Dave Brailsford told Eurosport afterwards. “We thought [80km] might be a little bit too far out but you had the 27 hairpins at the bottom and we thought that was where we were going to put things on the line and split things up and make things really hard.”
Sky certainly did that, drilling the pace into the foot of the Colle delle Finestre, the day’s second categorised climb and the so-called ‘Cima Coppi’, the highest point in this race at 2178m.
It was midway through the climb that Froome went solo, forcing everyone to react and putting Yates in immediate trouble. “It gave us a morale boost when Simon was unfortunately dropped,” Brailsford added. “Stage two was then to get rid of Tom [Dumoulin]. We decided that on the gravel roads [near the top of the climb], that that was where we were going to do that.”
Sure enough, Froome put another dig in, reaching the summit with a good 30-second lead over Dumoulin’s chase group. Incredibly, he put another 40 seconds into them on the descent.
Froome was flying, certainly. Even a man wielding an enormous salbutamol inhaler could not slow him down. (“I didn’t see him,” Froome said later. “I was probably watching the road.) But again he was helped by the team’s meticulous planning.
Sky, it turned out, had stationed almost all of the team staff – including mechanics, the team’s press officer, and Brailsford himself – at the side of the road to make sure that Froome was given food and drink exactly when he needed it.
He was also helped the almost incomprehensible lack of a coordinated chase. As they dithered, Froome built a three-minute lead, which put him in virtual pink, by around the 40km to go mark. And he held it, more or less, all the way to the finish, climbing the Jafferau, the final mountain at almost exactly the same pace as his pursuers.
It was an extraordinary performance, certainly. And scepticism is natural given cycling’s history. But it was also an extraordinarily well planned and well executed ride.
One thing is clear, at any rate. If Froome can finish the job tomorrow he will become the first man since Bernard Hinault in 1982/83, and only the third man in history after Hinault and Eddy Merckx, to win a ‘Tiger Slam’ of grand tours; in other words, to be reigning champion of the tours of France, Spain and Italy at the same time. An enthralling race is nearing its conclusion.