I should probably react to the long-since-broken news that Chris Froome will be riding the Tour de France in 2015. Maybe if it wasn’t so blindingly obvious that was going to happen, I might actually have something to say.
Froome had previously floated the possibility that he might ride the Vuelta and the Giro and skip the Tour. You may remember that I branded that ‘hogwash’ – only I felt it so strongly, I even resorted to upper case. Well it seems HOGWASH was an accurate assessment and Froome’s announcement that he will ride the Tour is worded as if that were the plan all along.
It’s quite the party trick to transform non-news into news. “Froome to ride Tour.” He basically convinced a large number of people that the planet had ceased revolving and then shocked them with the revelation that no, actually, the world is still turning. STOP THE PRESS!
Maybe Froome’s just trying to keep things interesting for himself because his season’s basically going to be exactly the same as it always is, whereas Alberto Contador’s being a bit more ambitious. The man they somewhat stupidly call El Pistolero is shooting for a Giro-Tour double.
Contador tried for the Giro-Tour double once before, in 2011. He won the Giro and came fifth in the Tour, but the results were scrubbed because he was eventually banned for testing positive for clenbuterol in 2010.
Contador blames that fifth place on friction burns:
“Just before the mountains I have another crash with Karpets and my knee ends up looking like a mess.”
That’s actually a reference to Vladimir Karpets, but I can never resist a Karpets joke. I once told the Guardian that there was friction between him and Team Sky’s Christian Knees.
What’s next?
It’s still very much the off season, but I thought I might do a little light spinning over the next few weeks. I’ll pick out a few riders to watch in 2015, take a quick look at the changes to the Tour’s points competition and probably do some other preview type stuff as well. If there’s anything you’d like to see covered, leave a comment or email me and I’ll do my best to sort of half think about maybe doing what you say before deciding that I don’t really have anything to contribute.
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