so after 3 weeks, 21 stages, 3,360 km and 84h 46′ 14” on a bike Chris Froome of team Sky has for the second time in 3 years been crowned the Tour De France champion. He beat 2nd placed Nairo Alexander QUINTANA ROJAS of team Movistar by 72 seconds.

Froome led for pretty much ll of the tour taking the yellow jersey firstly after stage 3 losing it to Tony Martin on stage 4 and regaining it by default on stage 7 after martin pulled out after breaking his collar bone during a crash on stage 6. After that he was never out of yellow and was  around 11 or 12 seconds ahead of his nearest rival from Stage 7 until stage 10 where he pulled off a stage win by a superb climb up La Pierre-Saint-Martin and streching his lead to 2 minutes 52 seconds in the process blowing away his main rivals of valverde, contador and nibali. Other rival quintana was 3 minutes back.

For the next 8 stages froome and his sky team mates were able to keep his rivals at bay. Stage 19 saw the first sign of trouble where froome was split from his sky team mates who were unable to contend with the constant pressure from nibali who one the stage by 1 minute 14 from froome, too late to get himself back into contention for the overall win however nibalis win was overshadowed by accusations he had made his break away against tour etiquette after froome had to stop briefly to remove a stone that had wedged itself between break and wheel rim. quintana also managed to pull back about 30 seconds. So on to the penultimate stage and in reality the last race stage which featured the finish on the summit of the mythical Alpe d’Huez. All froome and his sky team mates had to do was not allow quintana to claw back the 2 minutes 38 seconds he was behind. froome and his sky team mates managed to keep quintana in check up the climb to the summit of Croix-de-Fer but at the climb up Alpe d’Huez quintana managed to escape and for a while it looked like he hadbroken froome and would overhaul the time deficit some how froome managed to dig deep and in the end limited his loses and came out of the stage with a 72 second advantage which he kept on the final stage ito paris and his final climb was onto the podium to be crowned the 2015 Tour de France champion.

Unfortunately not only did froome have to battle the weather, avoid the crashes and ultimately gain by his own pedal power the time advantage to win the tour he also had to put up with constant attention by the media and certain individuals with accusations of doping. This led to him being abused by spectators along the route by verbal assault, being spat at and having urine thrown over him, even so called experts questioned his power data as being suspect for someone that is clean.

In the post Armstrong era cycling has had a tarnished reputation but there is nothing to suggest that Froome and team skys reputation should be tarnished. Taking this years tour Froome pretty much won the tour prior to the mountain stages he and his sky team were fortunate to be on the right side of the break on stage 2 when cross winds helped a breakway group of 26 riders including froome and minus quintana  and nibali who both lost 1.28 seconds from froome. Comapring froome and quintana in the mountain stages showed quintana actually came out with a superior time and pretty much lost the tour on stage 2. Quintana was not subjected to any of the doping allegations and is percieved to be  natural climber probably due to coming from the altitude of Columbia.

I think a small wager on Quintana for next years tour is the order of the day