Sean Kelly says the strength of Tour de France leader Chris Froome and his Sky team means his rivals might need to go for really long range attacks to reassert themselves.
Former world No 1 turned Eurosport commentator, Sean Kelly has said such was the dominance of Chris Froome and his Team Sky on yesterday’s first high mountain stage in the Tour de France that his rivals need to throw the rule book away and attack him very early in the hardest stages to come.
“It was an unbelievable stage,” said Kelly of Froome’s win on the summit of Ax-3 Domaines, where only team mate Richie Porte could get close to him.
“Froome; he was just so strong. The problem is, like, maybe it’s taken a lot of interest out of the Tour now because Froome has proved that he is so strong, and the team also. That’s very important; the way they rode today..”.
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Kelly added the amount of time some of the big favourites had lost was significant, even with so much racing left.
He also pointed to the fact that a large number of big name riders lost a lot of time yesterday rather than just one or two contenders.
“If you have one of the big favourites, maybe two, who lose more time than you would be expecting.... but when you see Tejay van Garderen, Evans losing huge time, Contador losing massive time, it’s really looking like the race could be over already.”
“You can always crack, but if you look at the strength in depth of Team Sky and the way they rode the race.... Richie Porte was riding there, then Froome takes it up and just blows everybody (away) that was left; which was very few because there was only three or four riders left.”
“And then Porte got orders to continue on and then he just started working at it again and he was the one that rode away from the other big favourites.”
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“So when you have that depth in the team, unless Froome has a disastrous day where he totally cracks.... that is looking highly unlikely.”
Kelly added with many of the pre race favourites so far down, the teams’ tactics of recent years may have to be parked in favour of much longer range attacks, perhaps not in vogue since the pre-Indurain era.
“You might see riders going on the attack from a long way out, that’s the only possibility. Because if you wait until the final mountain you can do nothing against Team Sky, they are so powerful as a team.”
“So I think in that way we could see some more action from a long ways out on the difficult stages.”
Asked if he was surprised that Froome had put so much time into his rivals on the first stage in the high mountains today, despite being very strong all season, Kelly replied in the affirmative.
“Yes I was surprised he put so much time into all the other favourites,” he said.
“Contador of course wasn’t good today but.... you can go down the list of other favourites and they have lost massive time today.”
However, Kelly said it was always possible for a strong rider to show his hand too early, adding there was still a long way to the finish in Paris.
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