Kimmage on Froome: He has redefined what it means to be ill

Paul Kimmage pours over the many illnesses of Chris Froome and examines David Walsh’s take. And he comes to some interesting conclusions about both.

 

Kimmage on Froome: He has redefined what it means to be ill

 

Former pro rider turned journalist Paul Kimmage has said Chris Froome’s legacy is that he has redefined what it means to be ill.

Froome returned an Adverse Analytical Finding at the Vuelta a Espana. Asthma medication Salbutamol was found in his sample at twice the allowable dose.

The test result was returned after stage 18. The UCI is seeking an explanation from the rider and his team.

But Kimmage has now marvelled at the range of serious illnesses Froome has struggled with.

Writing in the Sunday Independent newspaper in Ireland today Kimmage outlines several incidents Froome said he was struggling with illness only to bounce back against the odds.

“For six years now, since the extraordinary transformation at the 2011 Tour of Spain, Froome has been an accident waiting to happen battling five conditions – bilharzias, typhoid, urticaria, blastocystosis, asthma – in his march towards the summit,” Kimmage writes.

“Forget the astonishing accelerations (Mont Ventoux 2013, La Pierre Saint Martin 2015) and multiple Tour wins, this is the Froome legacy. He has redefined what it means to be ill.”

Kimmage focuses in detail on what Froome told journalist David Walsh about being ill on the final week of the 2015 Tour.

He told Walsh he refused a TUE to clear up congestion and a sore throat that was spreading to his chest.

In the David Walsh interview at the time Froome said his chest was burning on the start line as he held in his coughing.

He was standing beside Vincenzo Nibali and Nairo Quintana and didn’t want them to know he was “100 per cent sick”.

Two days later, on the penultimate stage, Froome told Walsh he had not other game plan but to simply hang on.

However, Kimmage notes he would finish 5th on the stage.

And while David Walsh wrote at the time that “his legs weren’t good but his spirit sustained him”, Kimmage points out Froome gained time that day on some very big names.

“He stuck four minutes into Dan Martin and finished almost two minutes clear of some elite climbers – Contador, Vincenzo Nibali, Romain Bardet and Robert Gesink,” says Kimmage.

Froome would win the Tour but Paul Kimmage says he seemed to take no time out to recover.

Instead a few days after the Tour he was riding an post-Tour criterium in Holland for appearance money – “still coughing and wheezing presumably and sucking on his inhaler”.

Kimmage disagrees with Walsh’s take: “Some might say his spirit sustained him. I call it taking the piss,” he writes.