Richie Porte buries hatchet with Chris Froome on quest for maiden Tour de France title
KEEP your friends close, and your enemies closer. Australia’s great Tour de France hope Richie Porte believes he can recover from his sickening crash in 2017 to overcome Chris Froome and the mental demons that still persist.
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RICHIE Porte has vaulted into the lead at the Tour de Suisse when his phone beeps.
It’s a message from Chris Froome. “Congrats. Want to catch up?”
It is mid-June, less than a month out from the Tour de France. Porte hasn’t seen the four-time Tour winner since leaving last year’s edition in the back of an ambulance.
They haven’t ridden together for longer than that, when Froome attempted to mend a relationship fractured by what Porte said was Froome’s collusion with rivals to bury him on last year’s Criterium du Dauphine final stage.
But suddenly, on the eve of another 21-day battle over 3351km, they are on a gentle ride like two boxers at a weigh-in. The superstar Brit in one corner and the Australian desperately hungry to take his seat atop cycling’s throne in the other.
Theirs is a complex relationship. Former teammates, roommates and close mates, once again about to wage war in one of the most gruelling tests in world sport.
Porte is a new father, while Froome has cycling’s version of labour pains. The best stage racer in the world remains the subject of a drawn-out doping investigation after recording more than twice the permitted levels of asthma medication, salbutamol, in a test last year.
Quietly-spoken and uber-polite off the bike, on it Froome is hunting a fifth Tour crown as a ruthless, cold-blooded assassin.
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Porte indulges in the small talk, but the guard is up.
“I know where the boundary is now,” Porte said.
“I enjoy riding with him, but that’s the first time I’ve seen him since I crashed out of the Tour. Quite a lot has gone down between then and now.
“There’s probably a little bit of checking each other out and where we think we’re at. But it doesn’t mean that much; it’s just nice to catch up with him as a mate.
“I’ve got a new baby and that was more what we talked about rather than any of the stuff that’s gone on in the background.”
Porte is speaking to the Sunday Herald Sun from a Montgenevre altitude camp where he is putting the final touches on a Tour preparation vastly different to 12 months ago.
It’s a build-up that started it in a wheelchair after that terrifying crash in last year’s Tour, saw him struck down with illness and then wife Gemma giving birth to a boy, Luca.
A quiet French ski village in summer, Montgenevre is a fitting location given Porte’s has been a low-key Tour build-up.
Where last year he was up in lights with a string of head-turning race wins, this year he has been off-Broadway. He didn’t go back-to-back at Tour Down Under or the Tour de Romandie, while Tirreno Adriatico was wiped from the program after he was struck down with the flu in February and March.
But the Tour de Suisse triumph was the timely reminder and Porte speaks with the sort of calm disposition of someone who knows they’re on target.
“I don’t mind it to be honest,” Porte said of the low-key preparation.
“At Suisse I wasn’t as good as I was in last year’s Dauphine and I think going into the Tour, the last 10 days of that are really where the race is going to get brutally hard. That’s where you’re going to need to be at your best.
“It has been a blessing in disguise, I think. To go to Tour Down Under and come to Europe and get sick wiped some form off, but not having a big peak at the start of the year is only going to help me this year.”
Yet if Porte’s preparation has been different, the same questions remain.
Having never won a stage, never podiumed and never worn the yellow jersey at the Tour de France, can Porte graduate from the best week-long racer in the world to a Grand Tour winner?
Can he avoid the incredible amount of bad luck — punctures, crashes and illness — that have cost him at the cruellest of moments?
The fractured pelvis and collarbone from last year’s 78km/h Stage 9 crash have long since healed, but Porte admitted the mind hadn’t been as quick to follow.
“It hasn’t been the easiest thing to cope with, but I’ve done races now with fast descents and I’m fine and it’s part of the sport, really,” he said.
“But I don’t want to be sitting in my apartment in July not being able to move again. I think that’s the thing isn’t it? You never forget crashes like that; it’s always going to stick in your mind a bit.”
And can he thrive under the crushing stress and attention that the Tour de France forces upon its general classification contenders?
“The Tour is 21 days, but you have to race each stage as a one-day race. Every day there’s some new tactic or something you have to adapt to. It feels like a six-week race; it’s an absolute circus,” he said.
“The stress of the Tour is unbelievable. You go back home after the race and it’s like ‘Phwoar’, it feels like a hangover.”
But make no mistake, Porte is an hungry as he’s ever been.
Hardened by the setbacks and sharpened by the experiences, at 33 he knows the “now or never” window won’t stay open forever.
Last year’s Tour ended with Porte in a neck brace. This year he’s ready to finish with a trophy and a bouquet on the Champs Elysees.
“I’m ready for the Tour de France,” Porte said.
“It would be an incredible thing to do, to even finish on the podium. If I was to retire and have the photo standing on the Champs Elysees, that would be the photo that will take pride of place in my house.
“It’s why, as a young man, I moved from Tasmania to Italy to pursue that dream. It has been an absolute dream the whole way and the one thing now in my career that I’m missing is getting on the box in the biggest race.”
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Originally published as Richie Porte buries hatchet with Chris Froome on quest for maiden Tour de France title
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