An quiet performance for Team Sky at the USA Pro Challenge ended yesterday with Ian Boswell being best of the team in 52nd place overall, and Tour de France champion Chris Froome dropping out of the final sage.
The withdrawal continued what was a relatively anonymous performance in the race by the Briton, who was sitting 94th overall, over 45 minutes back prior to Sunday’s circuit race in Denver.
“We pulled Froomey because he was feeling a bit under the weather,” directeur sportif Dan Hunt explained afterwards. “He wanted to finish the race but we told him ‘rather than pushing it, see how you feel once you get going, and if you’re still not right then there’s nothing to gain by continuing’. We didn’t want the racing to exasperate the problem with him heading into his next block of training.”
Froome lost four minutes 59 seconds on the opening stage, placing 77th, and then had placings of 76th, 72nd, 108th, 49th [in the time trial - ed] and 98th.
He said after winning the Tour that he believed he would be a contender for the worlds.
“The world championships is an event that doesn’t often favour climbers like the way it does this year, so it’d be a great opportunity to go for that,” he said then. “I’d like to make the worlds the focus for the second part of my season and use that as motivation to keep my form up in the races that come before it.
“I want to try and see the season through, not just switch off completely,” he continued. “Winning the yellow and rainbow jerseys would be an incredible double. I’ve focused on the Tour up until now but being the world champion, that’s probably the second biggest prize in cycling.”
With just over a month to go until that contest, it seems that he has some amount of work to do to get back to winning shape.
Josh Edmondson also withdrew on the final stage, the rider falling seventeen kilometres from the end. Hunt said that he wasn’t too badly hurt, but that it would have been impossible to return. “By the time he fell the racing was full on so there was no way he was going to get back into the bunch. It was as simple as that,” he said.
“He has a few scrapes but there's certainly nothing serious.”
The team had four finishers. Joe Dombrowski pulled out prior to stage three due to repeated nosebleeds, most likely due to the altitude, while Peter Kennaugh withdrew one day earlier.
Also see: Froome says he’s put on four kilos since the Tour, but can get into shape for the worlds