CHRIS FROOME BACK TO AFRICA

He's come full circle, but is there time for another loop? We talk to the four-time Tour champ about his and African cycling's future

- Adam Becket

On a hot, cloudless March day in 2009, a young Chris Froome took to the roads of Africa for the Cape Argus Giro del Capo Challenge. Riding for the British-registered, Italian-based Barloworld team, Froome already had a Tour de France in his legs and comfortably won the first of three days of racing in South Africa against a small field of riders most of whom had never been anywhere near a Grand Tour.

The former Kenyan mountain biker was still working life out as a professional rider, and that win was his third ever on a road bike. Days later he was back in Europe and settling into a season of more intense racing.

Looking back at his results that year with the benefit of hindsight – 36th overall in his first Giro d’Italia – there was clearly some potential there. Froome hadn’t grown up racing in Europe and the pro peloton is not a welcoming environment in which to learn your craft, but his results were solid enough, and singled him out as someone who wasn’t just there as cannon fodder.

Still, few would have predicted the 23-year-old who had recently started riding under his British passport would go on to win four Tours de France, a Giro d’Italia and two Vueltas a España in a palmarés that makes him the best Grand Tour rider of his generation.

Fourteen years on, the 37-year-old returned to Africa to race on the continent for the first time since his pre-WorldTour days, riding the Tour du Rwanda for Israel-Premier Tech. It might be his 14th year as an elite cyclist, but still he battles on, having survived a potential career-ending injury and worked tirelessly just to get to the point where he can feel comfortable on a bike.

Full circle