Froome climbs right back into the driving seat
JUST 24 hours after his stinging mountain-top defeat, Vuelta leader Chris Froome bounced back hard to regain some vital time on his main rival Vincenzo Nibali.
The Sky rider blasted away on a short, punchy ascent to the monastery of Santo Toribio de Liebana, in the Cantabrian mountains south-west of Santander, shaking off the Italian.
Froome snatched back 21 seconds on Nibali, but more importantly the Briton also repaired any damage to his morale prior to tomorrow’s showdown ascent of the dreaded Angliru, rated Spain’s hardest single mountain climb.
Thanks to his unexpectedly aggressive display of uphill strength, Froome has proved that Wednesday’s setback on the Machucos summit finish was just a glitch rather than a bigger dip in climbing form.
“I’m very happy with how today went, it was much better than the Machucos. I’d be quite happy never to see that climb again,” Froome said.
“A lot of the guys have paid a price for such a big effort yesterday. We had our own strategy and that was to see if anybody was exposed on the last climb.
“As soon as I heard Nibali was dropped, we kept pushing at a high tempo. That was exactly the result we were looking for.”
Froome said he had paid a price on Wednesday’s climb from going so deep after his successful quest for victory on Tuesday’s time trial.
“It’s perfectly normal that I was not at 100 per cent and I’m certainly feeling a lot better today,” he said.
Froome and Team Sky needed to draw upon all their strength midway through a lumpy trek across the mountains of Cantabria.
First Russian rival Ilnur Zakarin, fourth overall, charged away with four of his Katusha team-mates. Then no less than seven separate attacks, all by the everaggressive Spanish veteran and double Tour de France winner Alberto Contador, rained down on Froome.
“Everybody’s legs can hurt,” said Contador, fifth overall, after his repeated challenges stretched the lead group. “That includes Team Sky’s. Anybody can have a bad day.”
However, Froome’s Sky team-mates Mikel Nieve and Wout Poels reeled in the moves and the Briton’s team kept up a steady pace through the spectacularly narrow River Liebana gorge to deter any more challenges.
The stage win in the punchy 2km uphill final ascent had already long gone to Belgium’s Sander Armee, below, but Froome was determined to test his rivals on the climb. “A lot of them had tried to attack earlier, so the team did a really strong pace at the bottom and some paid for their efforts for earlier on. It worked out perfectly in my favour,” Froome said. Today’s stage is another hilly challenge to the northern industrial coastal city of Gijon, where Froome should have few problems defending his 97-second advantage on Nibali.
His bid to become Britain’s first winner of the Vuelta, Spain’s equivalent to the Tour de France, now hinges on another strong mountain ride on the Angliru tomorrow.
Following yesterday’s tenacious climbing comeback, it seems there is every chance of that happening.
GERAINT THOMAS is now the best-placed home rider in the Tour of Britain at ninth overall after yesterday’s individual time trial.
Thomas finished eighth and Alex Dowsett ninth as stage winner Lars Boom of LottoNL-Jumbo snatched the overall race lead.