Froome couldn't afford bike as child in Kenya

As Chris Froome races up France's snow-capped mountains in a series of lung-busting Tour de France climbs, one man in a far away Kenyan village hopes a win for the "thin boy" he introduced to road cycling can transform the sport's popularity in Kenya.

"Chris is our big hope now," said David Kinjah, Froome's former mentor, as he watched television images showing the Kenyan-born rider nearing the end of stage eight of the Tour.

In the east African country best known for its champion runners, cycling has faced an uphill struggle to compete with athletics and football, sports which are not only more popular but also much more affordable.

"If you play football, it's easy - one ball for 20 people," explained 41-year-old Kinjah, as 10 young riders crammed his modest corrugated-roof home, which is filled with cycling medals, trophies and spare bike tyres.

"We have limited access to funds and bicycles here so if you put more boys on the bikes, you have to take care of them," said Kinjah, who also does cycling tours for tourists.

Froome survived a brutal early onslaught from his Tour de France rivals on Sunday to retain the yellow jersey after an epic ninth stage won by Ireland's Dan Martin.

Some of the challenges faced by the Kinjah's Safari Simbaz team, made up of teenage boys and young men from nearby villages, also frustrated young Froome when his single-parent mother introduced him to Kinjah.

Froome had to borrow a road bike from a sympathetic teacher as his mother, living in the servant quarters of a wealthy family in a Nairobi suburb, could not afford a new one.

"The teacher said 'you can have it', but it was a huge bike with a large frame so Chris couldn't properly reach the pedals or the handle," Kinjah remembered, laughing and shaking his head.Froome, 28, fell in love with cycling in Kinjah's Mai-I-Hii village, reachable only by a sun-kissed dirt road piercing through the lush green hills of the Kikuyu township north of Nairobi.

The Olympic bronze medallist has described Kinjah as a "role model" and an inspiration.

"He helped me see you didn't need the best bike or perfect conditions. You can just get on a bike and go - no matter where you are," Froome told the Guardian newspaper in January.

Kinjah, who remains Kenya's top cyclist, said Froome was a shy but determined boy, cared for by a loving mother who did her best to find an outlet for her son's considerable energy.

"He became one of us. We were happy, we didn't care about tomorrow. We moved one day at a time," said Kinjah, who cycling enthusiasts in Africa recognise by his flowing dreadlocks.

Eating plain white bread and bananas with sweet chai (tea), Kinjah said he had no idea the 12-year-old Froome would become a future champion, although he did recognise a steely determination.

"He was a very thin boy, nothing special," Kinjah said. "But he was not the kind of guy you could tell 'this is enough, stop it'. He always wanted to go further. He wanted to discover his own world."

A few years later, Froome moved to South Africa to study, but kept coming back during school breaks to Mai-I-Hii to ride across the Kenyan highlands with Kinjah's Simbaz.

As Froome crossed the stage eight finish line on Saturday, the young riders in Kinjah's house jumped up and cheered, aware that someone who spent years in the same room had just won the yellow jersey in the world's most prestigious road race.

"This makes me really motivated. I want to get there," said Vincent Chege, 18, who is one of around 20 boys who ride as Safari Simbaz, which means Safari Lions in Kiswahili. Some of the younger Lions watched the race with their helmets on.

"I just keep telling these boys 'look at Chris Froome'," Kinjah said. Though with no money and no support from parents, he concedes Kenyan riders stand little chance of making it.

Kinjah said Froome, who won a medal for Kenya in the All Africa Games in 2007, was right to switch his allegiance to Britain in 2008, even though it was a big loss for his country.

"He should have been a Kenyan," said Kinjah, who was nicknamed Black Lion during his stint in Italy riding for a professional cycling team in 2002. "But Chris had zero support from the Kenya Cycling Federation."

Kinjah said that for the 2006 Road World Championships Froome used official federation e-mails to enter himself, without the knowledge of officials who did not support him.After Kinjah obtained the password for the e-mail account, Froome wrote e-mails pretending to be the chairman and entered himself for the tournament. But the move didn't quite go to plan as Froome crashed into an official.

"I still have a photo of that crash: it says 'White Lion Knocking Down The Prey'," Kinjah said, chuckling.

Kinjah and Froome have stayed close, even though Froome's family link to Kenya was severed when his mother passed away in 2008. Only last month Froome sent back his Team Sky kit for Kinjah to auction.

But Kinjah joked that Froome would not get the better of his one-time mentor even as Tour favourite. "He will never beat me, as I'm too old to race him now. He's missed his chance."

Brailsford: Controversial Leinders an 'error of judgment'

Hiring a doctor once linked with alleged doping practices was a mistake, Team Sky principal Dave Brailsford said on Monday.

Last October, Sky severed ties with Belgian Geert Leinders, a former doctor at Rabobank who is under investigation by the Belgian judicial authorities after being implicated by former riders. Leinders has denied any involvement in doping.

"The whole thing is my responsibility. I will take that squarely on the chin. It's something I regret, it's a mistake," Brailsford told a news conference.

"I should not have done it. I made an error of judgment."

Team Sky have been under the microscope since last year when they started to dominate the field in ruthless fashion, with 2012 Tour de France champion Bradley Wiggins repeatedly being grilled on doping.

Things have been no different for Sky's current Tour leader Chris Froome, who said on Saturday after claiming the yellow jersey that he is "100 percent" clean.

He had to repeat it on Monday, the first rest day in the three-week race.

"I know that what I'm doing is right, I know that the stage I won two days ago ... I know that result will never be stripped," said Froome, who finished last year's Tour as runner-up to Wiggins.

There will be more questions to come along the road to Paris.

"At the end of the day we all know the level of suspicion that is in or around the sport and it's only right that we have to sit here and answer questions," Brailsford said.

"We have to take it on the chin, that's the reality."

This year's Tour is the 100th but it is also the first one since American Lance Armstrong lost the seven titles he won from 1999 to 2005 before admitting to cheating his way to glory.

Froome still alive and well after Pyrenees ambush

Rivals have been bragging that they dismantled Team Sky with a brutal onslaught in Sunday's second mountain stage, yet Chris Froome is still in yellow and on the path to a maiden Tour de France title.

"It should have been the death blow. I would have seized the opportunity," Sky sports director Nicolas Portal told Reuters on Monday as the peloton enjoyed the first rest day in the three-week race.

Movistar followed up on early attacks from the Garmin-Sharp teams in Saturday's eighth stage to isolate Froome on Sunday and the Briton quickly found himself with no team mates around him while Alejandro Valverde and Alberto Contador both had plenty of support.

Yet Movistar seemed content with eliminating Sky's Richie Porte, who had started the day in second place overall, while Saxo-Tinkoff played a waiting game.

"We had the feeling that Saxo were a bit under par," said Portal. "I heard that (Movistar manager) Eusebio (Unzue) was proud to have broken the Sky machine. It's clear that they were brilliant but I don't think he wanted to win the Tour, he wanted to secure second place (overall)."

"We learnt some lessons," Team Sky principal Dave Brailsford told a news conference, refusing to elaborate.

Froome leads Valverde by one minute 25 seconds and sixth-placed Contador by 1:51 after destroying the field in the opening mountain stage and he is expected to stretch his advantage after Wednesday's individual time trial to Mont St Michel en route to a gruelling third week in the Alps.

Belkin Dutch riders Bauke Mollema and Laurens Ten Dam are in third and fourth overall, but Froome does not regard them as top contenders for the win in Paris.

"The way I see it at the moment, my main rivals are Movistar and Saxo-Tinkoff," Froome told a news conference.

Spain's Contador, the 2007 and 2009 Tour champion, admitted that he was not at his best, although he drew comfort from the fact that his form usually improved in the third week of grand Tours. 

 

Eurosport

Froome still alive and well after Pyrenees ambush

08/07/2013 - 18:15

Cycling - Tour de France

Rivals have been bragging that they dismantled Team Sky with a brutal onslaught in Sunday's second mountain stage, yet Chris Froome is still in yellow and on the path to a maiden Tour de France title.

"It should have been the death blow. I would have seized the opportunity," Sky sports director Nicolas Portal told Reuters on Monday as the peloton enjoyed the first rest day in the three-week race.

Movistar followed up on early attacks from the Garmin-Sharp teams in Saturday's eighth stage to isolate Froome on Sunday and the Briton quickly found himself with no team mates around him while Alejandro Valverde and Alberto Contador both had plenty of support.

Yet Movistar seemed content with eliminating Sky's Richie Porte, who had started the day in second place overall, while Saxo-Tinkoff played a waiting game.

"We had the feeling that Saxo were a bit under par," said Portal. "I heard that (Movistar manager) Eusebio (Unzue) was proud to have broken the Sky machine. It's clear that they were brilliant but I don't think he wanted to win the Tour, he wanted to secure second place (overall)."

"We learnt some lessons," Team Sky principal Dave Brailsford told a news conference, refusing to elaborate.

Froome leads Valverde by one minute 25 seconds and sixth-placed Contador by 1:51 after destroying the field in the opening mountain stage and he is expected to stretch his advantage after Wednesday's individual time trial to Mont St Michel en route to a gruelling third week in the Alps.

Belkin Dutch riders Bauke Mollema and Laurens Ten Dam are in third and fourth overall, but Froome does not regard them as top contenders for the win in Paris.

"The way I see it at the moment, my main rivals are Movistar and Saxo-Tinkoff," Froome told a news conference.

Spain's Contador, the 2007 and 2009 Tour champion, admitted that he was not at his best, although he drew comfort from the fact that his form usually improved in the third week of grand Tours.

"It is true that Froome is in great form and that my form is not extraordinary but every time in the grand Tours I am better in the third week as I showed in the last Vuelta," Contador told a news conference. "Froome had problems in the last week, too."

In the 17th stage of last September's Spanish race, Froome, who had raced in the Tour and the London Olympics time trial, struggled while Contador launched a surprise, devastating, long-range attack to seize the overall lead, eventually winning the race.

"People can speculate and look at my previous performances...but I was not at my best (at the Vuelta)," Froome said

Ireland's Martin wins dramatic stage, Froome stays in yellow

Ireland's Dan Martin won a dramatic stage nine of the Tour de France in the Pyrenees on a day Britain’s Chris Froome had to dig deep to retain his leader’s yellow jersey.

Garmin-Sharp’s Martin won his first stage on the Tour, outsprinting Denmark’s Jakob Fuglsang (Astana) in a two-man shootout at the end of the 165.5km stage from Saint-Girons to Bagneres-de-Bigorre.

But the story of the day was race leader Froome having to ride the best part of 130km in isolation after all his Sky team-mates – including the Australian Richie Porte – were blown off the back of the main pack in a brutal opening hour of racing.

Porte was dropped on the second climb of the day, the Col de Mente, and finished the stage 18 minutes in arrears to plummet out of the top twenty.

A series of attacks from Garmin ahead of the first of five climbs opened the race from the outset, with Jack Bauer, David Millar, Tom Danielson, Ryder Hesjedal, Andrew Talansky and eventual stage winner Martin all heavily involved.

The Saxo-Tinkoff and Movistar teams of Alberto Contador and Alejandro Valverde also rode an aggressive stage, piling the pressure on Froome from the beginning – pressure which intensified after the unexpected cracking of Froome’s main lieutenant, Porte.

Power data debate heats up at Tour de France

After being lied to about doping for decades, cycling fans want the plain and simple truth.

Establishing the truth is, however, altogether more complicated.

Frenchman Antoine Vayer, who was a coach at Festina when the infamous EPO scandal broke in 1998, says it is possible to know who is cheating by measuring how much power a rider generates.

Team Sky principal Dave Brailsford, however, is not convinced.

"It's pseudo-science, we have our own data with real validity, people can create their own theories and we understand how difficult to get accurate information is and so to do that from afar is very difficult," Brailsford, who declines to make his riders' data public, told reporters.

The calculation is reliable. It is the interpretation that is subject to debate.

"Nobody invented that method of calculation. It is pure physics," Julien Pinot, a coach at French team FDJ.fr, told Reuters.

"It is a mathematical model that takes into account environmental data such as atmospheric pressure, temperature, weight," the Frenchman, who is Tour de France rider Thibaut Pinot's older brother, added.

Can those calculations give indications that a rider is cheating?

Vayer insists that a performance is "miraculous" if a rider goes beyond the 430-watt threshold, and "inhuman" beyond 450 watts.

"You've got to be careful with all of that," warns Brailsford.

"From a scientific perspective, it's got nothing to do with doping, looking at that data from a scientific perspective, we wouldn't use it as valid information, it wouldn't stack up. So we'll work with the facts and the data and our own information."

The first calculations made from Chris Froome's ascent to Ax-3-Domaines in his Tour de France stage eight win on Saturday shows that the Team Sky rider generated about 433 watts - the third best performance of all time on that climb.

"Any interpretation is delicate," says Pinot, who would rather use data taken from power metres, which have a "two per cent margin of error on a 30-minute climb".

Usually, those instant calculations are backed by power metre data but setting a barrier beyond which doping is inevitable "makes no sense", according to Pinot.

"It depends if the climb is made at a regular speed or in fits and starts, if it's part of a succession of ascents or not. Some do not make the difference," he explains.

Brailsford finds such theorising crude.

"You've got to be careful, because at some point if you draw a line in the sand and say above that point there is doping and below that point there is not doping, it's a very, very crude way to think about something," he said.

Pinot said he would rather look at trends.

"The last thing that struck me is the Tour of Switzerland. In the final time trial, (Portuguese) Rui Costa rode the last ascent (to the Flumserberg) in 30 minutes. In 1995, Marco Pantani rode it three minutes faster and it was on a stage with several climbs, the weather was bad."

Garmin-Sharp manager Jonathan Vaughters also believes a group of riders' climbing times should be looked at, not just the winner's, because to prevail in a Tour de France a rider somehow must push the limits.

Brailsford points out that human nature is such that new ground will always be broken.

"At some point in time the natural progression of the human race will mean riders can ride faster clean, than old guys used to ride 10 or 15 or 20 years ago, doped," the Welshman said.

"That's going to happen. Just to use this one line in the sand and go 'right, he's doping', it doesn't say take into account anything we've seen in the last 100 years of the athletic endeavour of sport, which is people get faster.

"At some point they've got to catch up and that doesn't mean to say somebody is doping."

Froome in yellow after stunning stage eight win

Britain's Chris Froome led a Sky one-two ahead of team-mate Richie Porte to win the first mountain-top finish of the Tour and take the leader's yellow jersey.

A devastating attack on the second of two mammoth climbs towards the end of the 195km stage eight into the Pyrenees saw Froome leave all his rivals for dead.

Porte followed Froome’s lead to make his own attack moments later, four kilometres from the summit, to put air between himself and the other race favourites and underline Sky’s domination in the world’s biggest bike race.

Almost a year after Bradley Wiggins and Froome secured a famous one-two on the Champs-Elysees, Froome and Porte made huge strides to repeat the feat in the fierce heat of southern France.

His arms aloft and a huge smile beaming across his face, Froome crossed the line 51 seconds ahead of his team-mate, with their nearest rival, Spain’s Alejandro Valverde of Movistar, coming home one minute and eight seconds in arrears and just ahead of Belkin’s Dutch duo Bauke Mollema and Laurens Ten Dam.

Spaniard Alberto Contador of Saxo-Tinkoff – considered Froome’s main rival ahead of the Tour – suffered on the final climb to Ax 3 Domaines and finished 1:45 down on the new yellow jersey, having to be paced up the Cat.1 ascent by his Czech team-mate Roman Kreuziger.Twenty-eight-year-old Froome now leads Tasmanian team-mate Porte by 51 seconds on GC, with Valverde in third place at 1:25. Contador is seventh, at 1:51.

“I couldn’t be happier,” Froome said after securing the second Tour stage win – and the first maillot jaune - of his career. “It really has been a very nervous week building up till now but the team has done fantastic job to come through first week in such a strong position.

“To win the stage and get Richie in second is a dream come true – it was the first proper GC day and it couldn’t have gone better.

Contador was not the only GC rider to wilt in the 30-degree temperatures and the Team Sky furnace, with 2011 winner Cadel Evans cracking on the final climb to trickle home more than four minutes down.

Australian Evans fared better than his BMC team-mate Tejay van Garderen, who was distanced by the main pack on the penultimate climb of the day, the Port de Pailheres, to lose more than 12 minutes at the finish of a stage which completely pulverised the general classification.

The seeds of Sky’s victory were sown on the precipitous slopes of the Pailheres climb – at 2,001 metres, the highest peak of the 100th edition of the Tour – after some relentless pace-setting by Vasil Kiryienka and Peter Kennaugh thinned out the pack to just 25 riders.

Colombian climber Nairo Quintana jumped clear of the pack early in the climb in pursuit of lone leader Christophe Riblon of Ag2R-La Mondiale, one of four riders to break clear of the peloton shortly after the start of the stage at Castres and build up a large lead of nine minutes on the opening flat stretch of the race.

With the three other initial escapees - Dutch national champion Johnny Hoogerland (Vacansoleil-DCM) and French duo Jean-Marc Marino (Sojasun) and Rudy Molard (Cofidis) – already caught, Quintana made his move shortly after similar solo attacks by Robert Gesink (Belkin) and Thomas Voeckler (Europcar).

Quintana caught Voeckler, Gesink and then Riblon, before soloing up the steepest section of the Tour’s first major test with Frenchman Pierre Rolland (Europcar) in pursuit.

The 23-year-old Colombian crossed the summit to take the Souvenir Henri Desgrange – awarded each year to the first rider to reach the Tour’s highest point – with a 40-second lead over Rolland, and a further 25 seconds over the Sky-led peloton.

Rolland, whose second place over the summit saw him reinstalled as the polka dot jersey for the king of the mountains competition, caught Quintana towards the end of the descent, with the excellent Kennaugh leading the chase for the main pack.

Quintana eased ahead of Rolland as soon as the final ascent arrived – but this was to prove immaterial once Froome and Porte combined to explode the main pack 7km from the finish.

One by one, the race favourites sank like stones cast into the sea. In quick succession, Evans, Rolland, RadioShack’s Andy Schleck, FDJ's Tibault Pinot, Garmin-Sharp’s Dan Martin and Katusha's Joquim Rodriguez were blown off the back.

Soon, it was a tale of three teams, with the Sky duo leading the race alongside Saxo-Tinkoff pair Contador and Kreuziger, and Movistar’s Quintana and Valverde.

Once Froome made his move, 5km from the finish, none of his rivals had an answer. Seemingly out of respect to team protocol and hierarchy, Porte took his foot off the gas, before unleashing his own blistering acceleration moments later.

Porte rode around 30 seconds down on his team leader, but Froome managed to increase the gap over the final kilometres to come home almost a minute to the good.

With Sunday’s stage nine from Saint-Girons to Bagneres-de-Bigorre featuring a succession of five peaks, Sky could well build up an insurmountable lead at the top of the standings before Monday's first rest day.

But 28-year-old Froome remains focused, stressing that there is still a long way to ride until Paris.

“Despite the result, we were put under pressure today,” he said, with reference to Quintana’s attack. “There are still two weeks to go and there’s definitely going to be a lot more attacks to withstand. Now we have the jersey we’re going to have to defend it.”

Froome '100 per cent' denies doping

Chris Froome faced the inevitable questions about doping at the Tour de France after demolishing his rivals to claim the overall lead and said his results would not come under suspicion in the future.

Briton Froome won Saturday's eighth stage, a 195-km mountain ride from Castres, to lead overall by 51 seconds from Team Sky colleague Richie Porte with Spain's Alejandro Valverde in third place 1:25 off the pace.

His dominant performance was reminiscent of the way the disgraced rider Lance Armstrong would hammer the field in the first mountain stage of the Tour before controlling the rest of the race with often sterling performances in the time trials."I know the sport has changed. There's absolutely no way I'd be able to get these results if the sport had not changed."Results now are definitely a lot more credible. The questions should be asked about people who were winning races maybe five, 10 years ago when we know doping was more prevalent."

While 2012 champion Bradley Wiggins last year lost his cool when grilled about doping and angrily hit out at accusations made on Twitter, Froome remained calm.

"For me it is a bit of a personal mission to show that the sport has changed," he said.

"I certainly know that the results I get are not going to be stripped 10, 20 years down the line. That's not going to happen."

Last year, American Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour titles, won from 1999-2005, for doping and then admitted in a television interview in January he had taken performance-enhancing drugs.

Just as the translator finished saying Froome's words in French, the rider took the microphone again and continued: "Anyone who actually spends a bit of time with the team, with us... see that this is months and months of preparation - going to these training camps in altitude all together, the support off the bike from the sport staff, from my fiancée, this is so much preparation that it's not 'wow', it does add up."