Froome With A View

We ride with the triple Tour de France winner in Monaco, the closest thing he’s got to home roads.

- Sam Dansie

So you’re going for a ride with Chris Froome, eh?” a friend back home in Northumberland said. “That’s pretty cool.” I’ll be honest, the prospect was. Froome, the Côte d’Azur, a bike ride – there’s a lot to like there. A couple of buts held me back initially. Ever seen photos of the Daily Mail’s chief football writer Martin Samuel down in Cobham of a Wednesday, having a kick about with Chelsea? No, of course not. Serious journalists don’t go onto the field of play with their subjects. It’s a bit cosy, and in cycling such an outing inevitably results in burning ears for months afterwards. Honestly though, I’m not all that serious. That’s a realm for finer, more forensic minds than my sclerotic grey matter can attain, so it was a comparatively easy hurdle to overcome.

Something else checked my headlong rush into a quick ‘yes’. ‘Amateur crashes with triple Tour winner, scuppers 2017 title defence,’ is just the sort of catastrophic, career-ending headline that’ll keep one awake at night. I’d already weaselled out of one opportunity to join the Team Sky leader on a ride when he’d been in Southampton doing wind tunnel testing before the 2016 Tour. This time it involved a trip to the south of France and the pros finally outweighed the cons. Trusting to Cycling Plus’s generous insurance for covering acts of lunacy, I found a bike hire company and booked myself a Trek.

Team base