Rio’s Golden Favorites: Chris Froome in the Cycling Road Race

Chris Froome wins 2016 Tour de France
Chris Froome wins the 2016 Tour de France

On Sunday, July 24, Chris Froome celebrated his third Tour de France victory. He is the first person since the legendary Spaniard, Miguel Indurain, in 1995, to win consecutive Tour de Frances. (Of course, that doesn’t include the American cyclist who must not be named.)

But despite winning the premier cycling event of the year, Froome wants to bring gold back to Britain at the 2016 Rio Olympics. In fact, Froome was on Team GB at the 2012 London Olympics, where he and his teammates ensured victory for Bradley Wiggins in the road race. This year, Team GB will be looking to propel Froome to gold.

According to the BBC, Froome “can climb and time trial with the best in the race and has one of the strongest teams ever assembled around him.” In the tour, he did just that, and also, fortunately, avoided injury.

As sometimes happens, the crowds on the narrow mountain roads can narrow the path like so-much cholesterol. On Mont Ventoux, a television motorbike was forced to stop suddenly, creating a quick pile up. The speed was slow, but cyclists fell and bikes became unwieldy. Froome’s bicycle was crushed by another motorcycle, so he simply decided to jog up the hill, finding bicycles along the way to get him where he needed to go.

His biggest rival, Tom Dumoulin, was not so fortunate. In a separate incident, he collided with another cyclist, and ended up breaking the radius bone in his left forearm. With essentially, a broken wrist, it is unlikely that Dumoulin will recover in time for Rio.

Other rivals include Nairo Quintana of Colombia and Alberto Contador from Spain will compete on the 241.6 km course that starts at Fort Copacabana that goes West along the beaches, sweeps North and then East inland, before returning to the fort. Barring injury, Froome is looking to pull into Fort Copacabana and take the road race gold medal for Great Britain again.