Lance Armstrong believes Chris Froome's breakaway ride on yesterday's Alpe d'Huez stage at the Tour de France would likely send him closer to retirement rather than re-establish him as a top rider.
Armstrong, stripped of his seven Tour de France wins and banned for life for doping, said it was good to see Froome up the road. However, he believed Froome's inability to go close to winning the stage from the breakaway was in stark contrast to his days when he won four Tour titles.
And the Texan believed Froome would be thinking about that point, even though it was "good to ever be in a breakaway and potentially win up Alpe d'Huez".
"Days like that, for a rider like Chris Froome… that sends you to retirement, I promise you," Armstrong said on his podcast, The Move. "Here's a man who has won four Tours. In his mind he is a Tour champion, he could still win a fifth Tour. That person, and I've been that guy in the comeback years; that person is not a breakaway specialist.
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"But let's just say you do get in the breakaway, like he did today… and I did the same thing in 2010, got in a long breakaway in the Pyrenees into Pau. And I wasn't even close to winning the stage. And I knew, and this is not a criticism of Chris Froome, I'm just telling you the way it is…
"You get in that break and you realise, and I'm a seven-time Tour de France winner, (you think to yourself) 'I'm in a long breakaway that nobody gives a shit about, they are letting it go, and I can't even win. Today. I need to go home.' Straight up. I'm not asking you to agree, I'm telling you what it felt like to be there. And I promise you he thinks the same thing."
Yesterday, Froome (Israel Premier Tech) got across to the early breakaway by attacking down the Col du Galibier with compatriot Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers). The breakaway was minutes clear of the remains of the main field at the base of Alpe d'Huez, with Pidcock attacking the group some 10km from the finish.
While Froome proved one of the strongest in the breakaway on the climb, Pidcock rode away to win by 48 seconds from Louis Meintjes (Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert Matériaux) with Froome 3rd at 2:06.
It was Froome's best performance since his life-threatening crash during a TT recon at Critérium du Dauphiné in 2019. He did not race for the remainder of that season and has failed to recapture his former condition since then.
