Froome or the man who can resurrect the double Giro-Tour – Tour de France 2018 – Cycling

Alberto Contador dreamed about it. Nairo Quintana has put his "sueño amarillo" in danger for him too to try his luck. But the two Latin climbers had to fold their wings in the face of the historic challenge of the double Giro – Tour. In 2011, in 2015 or in 2017, the Pistolero and the Condor failed, in accordance with the ominous augurs that accompanied them, and it was quickly established the impossibility of this tour de force in modern cycling …
      

But now Chris Froome is moving towards Noirmoutier-en-l'Île, with his recent victories on the Italian roads and before the World Anti-Doping Agency. They are still numerous to deny his presence at the start, but the British can now oppose the anti-doping authorities' blank check to the cries of ostracies (and Badger) who accompany his pedaling. Unattractive but terribly effective, it is symbolic of a whole other truth that has come to dominate the cycling world for a few decades: impossible is no longer British.
      

Under the auspices of their godfather Dave Brailsford, Team Sky's heroes aim high, hit hard and harvest historic success. And Chris Froome is the best of them, more reliable than Bradley Wiggins (no offense to a Geraint Thomas still forced to gnaw) and ready to hit harder than ever. If he is a runner who can emulate Eddy Merckx, winner of four consecutive Grand Rounds between 1972 and 1973 (before being tested, on the Tour of Lombardy, positive for norephedrine, a decongestant that can be used to treat Asthma …) is this funny British, already the best test runner step by step this turn of the century.
      

Calendar, experience, team … Froome has it all for him

If anyone can overcome the adversity and the weight of history, it must be Chris Froome, the "white Kenyan" come to put his opponents on the roads of France, Spain and Italy . The Tour is the test that best suits his qualities and the DNA of his team, which quickly triumphed in July but often suffered in May and September. Froome and the Sky regain their best playing field, they have already managed to overtake Tour and Vuelta, and the circumstances are more favorable than when Contador came out of his Giri victorious.
      

The Briton is today the favorite of a Tour where he is not the only one to hope to shine after having wrestled in Italy: in this year of World football, which sees the big mbad of July pushed back a week, his runner-up on the transalpine podium Tom Dumoulin is also in the Vendée and Thibaut Pinot had to take the wheel before his health esquintée does not deprive him of a 3rd place on the Giro and a return at Alpe d'Huez with the Tour.
      

This Great Loop has many pitfalls, which will create significant gaps and it is perhaps the most open edition since 2011, when Cadel Evans had made his way into history with a southern success before British hegemony. But Chris Froome is no longer the runner born in the bush and awkward pack that landed a few years ago. And with the armada aligned to surround him (Thomas, Kwiato, Moscon, Rowe …), difficult to imagine trapped by the difficulties of the first nine days of racing, before the Alps.
      

A new success would propel Chris Froome into a club of five winners of five Tours de France and offer him a privileged status in a debate on the greatest champions of cycling history. " There are certain consubstantial traits to greatness, some acquired and others given, which elude Chris Froome ", wrote recently in a column for Cyclingnews Philippa York, author of some of the most beautiful lines of British cycling history when she ran under the name of Robert Millar. " But you can not argue against success in Grand Tour, ferocity and mental toughness ."
      

Dismantle omens

Since Monday, all seers seem to be green. But beware Chris, this double Giro – Tour occupies a place of choice in the story in chiaroscuro of the Little Queen. It is essential to the legend of some of the greatest of this sport. Fausto Coppi, Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Miguel Indurain and Marco Pantani are until now the only ones who have managed to combine the romance in pink and the size in yellow the same year. Some of these successes today leave a bitter taste.
      

The rise of Marco Pantani to the rank of holy pedaling was immediately followed by his fall, and his doubling remains emblematic of the years when heavy doping was institutionalized. " From Pantani I still have the wonderful memory of his demonstrations (…) but also the anger that animated me this morning at Madonna di Campiglio and the sadness, which often reminds me of the fate of a boy who , as so many young people today, is lost in the void ", wrote in 2015 Carmine Castellano *, former director of the Giro, the front row seats for the victory of the Pirate as for its decline, initiated by a control revealing a hematocrit too high in May 1999, the day after a success in Madonna di Campiglio. We will then learn, through a commission of inquiry of the French Senate, that the victory of Pantani on the 1998 Tour was fed to the EPO.
      

For Chris Froome, the context is already extremely heavy before he starts. It's up to him to change the end of the story.
      

* "Tutto he rosa della mia vita. Trenti anni di Giro d'Italia "(" The whole rose of my life: Thirty years of the Giro d'Italia "), published in 2015 by RCS Sport, company organizing the Tour of Italy.