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Chris Froome aims for fifth Tour de France title, says Giro d'Italia course "perfect" for Geraint Thomas

Team Sky is also targeting Tokyo 2020 Olympic road race as pasrt of leaving a "legacy" in cycling...

Chris Froome has said that the course of this year’s Giro d’Italia is “perfect” for his team mate Geraint Thomas – with the four-time Tour de France champion adding that he aims to “leave a legacy” to cycling by winning the French Grand Tour for a record-equalling fifth time, as well as the road race at the Olympic Games in Tokyo next year.

Back in 2012, Froome finished runner-up to his team-mate Sir Bradley Wiggins, who became the first Briton to win the yellow jersey. Froome himself won it four times in the following five years, and Team Sky’s dominance continued last year as Geraint Thomas triumphed.

Should both Froome and Thomas both ride the race this year, then Team Sky – whose sponsorship of the UCI WorldTour outfit finishes at the end of 2019 – will for the first time have two riders who have both won it.

Coming to last year’s Tour de France, Froome had won the previous three Grand Tours – the 2017 Tour de France, the Vuelta, and Giro d’Italia – but retaining the yellow jersey was beyond him, losing time to a crash on the opening day and Thomas taking control of the race with back to back wins in the Alps.

Thomas has yet to confirm whether or not he will target the Giro d’Italia, a race he crashed out of in 2017, but if he does, that could well be the principal focus of his season rather than the Tour de France, with no rider having won both races since the late Marco Pantani in 1998.

Speaking to the Corriere della Sera about his ambitions for this year’s Tour de France, Froome, now aged 34, said: “I’ve won it four times, I’m the right age to leave a legacy. Winning the fifth would be the best way to close the circle.”

Asked whether his decision not to aim for a second Giro d’Italia was due to his experience at the Tour de France last year, where he finished third overall, he said: “At a certain age you need to change your programme and conserve your energy.

“For the first time I’ve decided to do a block of training (as well as a stage race) in Colombia and then will contest the UAE Tour, the Tour of Catalonia, Tour de Yorkshire and the Dauphiné. Few races, but quality ones.”

Froome’s ride last year on Stage 19 of the Giro d’Italia, where he launched a solo attack on the Colle delle Finestre with 80 kilometres remaining to snatch the overall lead from Mitchelton-Scott’s Simon Yates, has already gone down in cycling folklore, and the Team Sky rider agreed it was a career-defining moment.

“A challenge first of all, a huge emotion afterwards,” he said. “I had just one chance of recouping the deficit built up in the opening two weeks, and I played it out over three hours. All or nothing.

“Determination, an incredible team and a lot of luck all played their part; if someone had helped [Team Sunweb’s Tom] Dumoulin, I wouldn’t have won. It will remain the greatest undertaking of my career.”

He said he would miss the Giro “enormously” this year, describing the race as “20 great Classics in a row. It’s unpredictable, difficult to control, full of traps, with a brutal final week. I wouldn’t leave cycling without racing it again.”

For now it appears that the 22-year-old Colombian Egon Bernal will lead Team Sky at the Giro, and it is a race that Froome believes he could win at his first attempt.

But he also believes that this year’s parcours particularly suits Thomas, whom he says has “a bitter taste in his mouth after the incident that cost him the maglia rosa two years ago,” when he crashed due to one of the race’s motorcycle outriders parking up on the wrong side of the road.

Froome laughed when it was put to him that having a Thomas who a was tired after riding the Giro might benefit him at the Tour, saying: “At Sky we always ride for the team. Last year, Geaint’s victory at the Tour made me very happy.”

Froome also revealed that there he has his sights set on victory in a specific one-day race – the road race at next year’s Tokyo Olympic Games, which he said “seems really tough.”

He added: “I’ll have to change my programme, but it will be worth it.”

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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RTB | 5 years ago
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"with no rider having won both races since the late Marco Pantani in 1998".

Sounds like a certain reverance in the way that is written.  Pantani is a drugs' cheat who should be bracketed with Armstong and at least have a very big asterisk next to his name in the records.  Yes his demise and the circumstances of his death was very sad to see, on a human level eliciting deep sympathy, but on a sporting level nothing but contempt.

How depressing it is to see his name still scrawled onto roads during the Giro and Tour by deluded 'fans' who then would hypocritically throw vitriole at Armstrong and worse still the likes of Froome whose record is clean and unbesmirched.

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PRSboy | 5 years ago
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"Team Sky is also targeting Tokyo 2020 Olympic road race as pasrt of leaving a "legacy" in cycling..."

"Froome laughed when it was put to him that having a Thomas who a was tired after riding the Giro might benefit him at the Tour, saying: “At Sky we always ride for the team. Last year, Geaint’s victory at the Tour made me very happy.”

Proof reader still having a snow day?yes

 

Anyway... does that mean that poor old G will be freelancing again, with Bernal having protected rider status at the Giro, Froome at the Tour?

Or are they running with the 'shared' protected status, which worked so well for the last three days of the TdF?

Must be tricky having so many potential winners on Team Sky...

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