While Eros Poli’s incredible Mont Ventoux victory is one of our favorites to recount, it has to be said that Chris Froome may have Eros beat when it comes to stories of that legendary climb. He’s won it in the Tour, and he’s also had the most spectacularly catastrophic luck on the 16 kilometer climb. On our most recent podcast, he shared his two stories. Now, as the Tour de France Femmes approaches the ascent up Ventoux on Friday, we’re recounting his 2013 and 2016 stages here.
If you don’t know Chris Froome, the four-time Tour de France champion and seven-time Grand Tour winner is worth looking up—before Tadej ever hit the scene, Froome was the one of the winningest riders to wear the yellow jersey.
2013: His Favorite Ventoux
“Definitely one of my favorite wins, I think, was 2013,” he says. “It was on Bastille Day, July the 14th, which is a big big day for the French. All the French riders want to win on that stage. That was a highlight for me in my career. My my wife doesn’t come to many races either, but that day she was she was waiting at the top of the climb and just so many things came together for me.”
“Being in yellow on Mont Ventoux, being able to drop my my rivals one by one… Coming into the last kilometers, I was still with Nairo Quintana, and I thought I’d have to sort of concede the stage to him, given that I’d been pulling most of the way up, just wanting to to gain as much time over my rivals as possible. But only with about a kilometer, kilometer and a half from the end, I just felt his presence was no longer on my wheel anymore. It just felt so amazing to be coming in to the top of Mont Ventoux on my own.”
The win wasn’t easy, though. “I was a bit of a mess after the finish line,” he adds. “I literally had to go on oxygen with the medical team that were at the finish. They put put a mask on me, I was just unable to breathe at the top there. It was obviously a massive effort, but it was probably one of the most beautiful, beautiful victories I’ve ever had on the bike.”
2016: His Legendary Ventoux
Even non-cycling fans likely remember the 2016 race, though, when he broke the internet with his *run* up Ventoux. (Watch it here.)
“Obviously in the in the moment, it was absolute chaos, but now at least I can have a little bit of a laugh about it,” he says. “It was just a moment of absolute panic. We were just over a kilometer from the finish. We had broken away from the peloton behind us, thinking that it was basically between the three of us, and we were thinking of how to race in the final kilometer.”
“I knew the the group behind us was probably over a minute back,” he adds. “But the moment the crash happened, I got back up, but the motorbike behind us ran over my frame and cracked the frame. So the other two guys got on their bikes again and started started going almost immediately. And I was there with a broken bike. I was like: ‘I have just over a kilometers to finish. I know there’s no spare bike arriving anytime soon because our car wouldn’t have been able to pass the peloton that was behind us because we were only one minute ahead.’”
His mind was racing. “I remember just thinking, ‘Well, I’m not gonna get a bike anytime soon. I’m not just gonna stand here.’ And it was chaos. There were just fans everywhere. I realized the best thing to do was just get closer to the finish. All this thought process probably only took me about a second and a half, two seconds, and it was just like, RUN. Just keep going forwards and keep heading towards the finish line.”
And so he did—and the fans loved it. “I think if if anything, I think it just showed how much that race meant to me and how I was prepared to do anything just to keep that yellow jersey on my shoulders in that instant, whether it meant running in cycling shoes for the rest of the way to the finish line.”
And that’s why he’s still a beloved figure in the sport.
You can also hear about all of his favorite climbs while riding on his favorite roads on our trip of a lifetime with Chris this month. He’s just started the Froome Foundation, which has the goal of giving young East African riders access to bikes, education, and a potential pathway into professional cycling. The foundation’s first fundraising experience, a small-group ride through the South of France roads Chris trained on throughout his career, is coming up in August with inGamba—and spots are still available.
To learn more about the Froome Foundation trip or to inquire about spots, click here.
Want to hear more? Listen to Froome relive Ventoux on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other Podcast Players. Or join him on a trip this month!
