Fears for Chris Froome as French greet Tour champ with jeers

Chris Froome was loudly booed, jeered and catcalled on his first appearance in front of the French public.

Chris Froome leads Team Sky during a training session in France this week. Picture: AFP

Chris Froome was loudly booed, jeered and catcalled yesterday on his first appearance in front of the French public since the threat of a possible doping ban was lifted.

The investigation into the Team Sky rider, whose bid for a fifth Tour de France title starts tonight, was officially closed earlier this week. Although cycling’s governing body, the UCI, and the World Anti-Doping Agency said he had no case to answer after a urine sample last year showed an excess of asthma medication, sections of the French public appear to need more convincing.

A host of Froome’s rivals have urged fans to treat him with respect but the advice seems to have fallen on deaf ears. The booing will not necessarily surprise Froome, however. He has never been hugely popular in France, as evidenced more starkly when urine was thrown at him in 2015.

Although there was an element of pantomime to this week’s jeers, the fear is that once racing starts, Froome and the rest of his team become highly vulnerable. Crowds tend to be much more badly behaved in the mountains, especially up Alpe d’Huez, where tens of thousands of spectators will be within throwing, touching or spitting distance of the riders.

Yesterday’s reaction was exactly what one of Froome’s main rivals and critics, Frenchman Romain Bardet, implored his countrymen to refrain from.

“It is important that the Tour de France starts in a calm climate,” Bardet said, stressing that Froome should be “accepted and, above all, respected by everyone: the riders, all the stakeholders, the public”.

“I’m happy the UCI has given an opinion and made a decision on (the salbutamol case). Chris Froome suffered this situation for nine months, as did the world of cycling — we all suffered from that.”

Meanwhile, Mark Cavendish has reiterated his intention to use this year’s Tour to try to close in on Eddy Merckx’s record of 34 stage victories. The Manxman, riding for Dimension Data, has 30.

“As an incentive, it’s really the only thing I’ve got left,” Cavendish said. “It seems so close yet it is a big distance away. One stage of a Tour de France makes a rider’s career, let alone one a year, let alone multiple stages. It’s harder than it looks. But if it’s not this year, so be it; I’ll try and get it before the end of my career, that’s for sure.”

Cavendish’s form coming into this race is unclear. Since March, he seems to have spent almost as much time recovering from three major crashes as he has racing. The most damaging fall, however, came at the Tour de France last year, when he broke his shoulder in an incident on stage four that also led to the disqualification from the race of world champion Peter Sagan.

Cavendish says the damage to his shoulder still prevents him from getting as low over the front wheel as he would like.

“I can’t really put weight on it to get so far over the handlebars,” he said. “I can’t pull on the handlebars (like I used to). I just have to deal with it and make sure I’m stronger elsewhere on my body.”

The other thing Cavendish must deal with is his own maturity. Is he as competitive and hard-nosed now as he was when he won that first stage? “No,” he said. “I’m 33 years old and I’ve got four kids at home.”

THE TIMES