Three riders are potential challengers for Chris Froome’s Tour title in the years to come.
Adam Yates will be looking to follow in the pedal-strokes of his fellow Brit if his performance at this year’s Tour is anything to go by.
After narrowly missing out on a yellow jersey after Chris Froome attacked away on the descent of the Col de Peyresourde on Stage 8 to take victory, Yates ended up in fourth place on general classification, a mere 21 seconds off eventual third-place finisher Nairo Quintana.
An impressive performance on its own, which becomes even better when you take into account this was the first time he had ever ridden GC at a Grand Tour.
This result could have been much better had it not been for a difficult final week in the alps, where he punctured just before the penultimate climb of Stage 19. His chase back to the peloton was extremely difficult due to the high tempo on the climb, while also being affected by the crash and eventual abandon of Tom Dumoulin at the back of the field.
He ended up losing 30 seconds to Quintana on this stage – the difference between him finishing on the podium. Yates did have the consolation prize of winning the young rider’s jersey.
Having finished twice inside the top ten at previous Tours, Frenchman Romain Bardet shone like a beaming star in the alps to surge home and take an impressive second place on general classification.
Bardet finished sixth in 2014 and ninth in 2015 and, alongside Thibaut Pinot, was one of the major hopes for both a stage win and a high finish on GC.
The first week of the race went well, however he dropped 20 seconds on the final mountain stage in the Pyrenees, losing time to key rivals including Adam Yates. A solid second week was again however reduced somewhat by a poor time trial on Stage 13, where he finished seventh out of the final top-ten GC finishers.
However, he came to life in the alps, only losing one second in the final week to Chris Froome, and taking a fabulous win on a treacherous Stage 19. In contrast, Yates lost one minute and 57 seconds to Froome, with Quintana fairing little bit better in losing one minute and 22 seconds.
To be coming good in the third week shows that Bardet prepared extremely well for this Tour. If he continues to improve both his climbing and time trialling, which he has done over the past three years, more podiums at the minimum will be in striking distance for this talented 25-year-old.
Lampre haven’t had a genuine GC rider for a while now. Rui Costa moved to the team in 2014 and was earmarked to fill that role, however has never been able to sustain good performances over the three weeks, and has now reverted back to the rider he was at Movistar; a stage poacher.
Louis Meintjes looks to be the man that Lampre will support over three weeks going forward, after finishing a pleasing eighth place on GC. This follows up from a top-ten performance at last year’s Vuelta a Espana while riding for the MTN Qhubeka squad.
In the fight for the white jersey, Meintjes was Yates’ closest rival, finishing two minutes and 16 seconds behind the Brit. Most of this time was lost on the flat crosswind finale of Stage 11, where he got caught behind the split along with Joaquim Rodriguez, losing over a minute to his rivals.
He also lost a lot of time on the Stage 13 time trial, where he was one minute and 20 seconds behind Yates.
However, his final week was impressive, as he made up over 45 seconds on Yates, mostly in the high mountain stages of Stages 17 and 19.
The talented South African looks the goods, and could be Africa’s next Grand Tour contender.
The future of the Tour does not just include domination from Froome, with these three riders set to challenge him in the years to come.
So to sum up these previous pieces – read Part 1 and Part 2 here – was the Tour boring?
From a yellow jersey perspective, you can say so, from the Stage 13 time trial onwards. However, the closeness of the contenders at the first rest day did give us all hope that Froome would be challenged.
This year was not a typical Froome performance, where he blazed away on the opening mountain-top finish, as he did in 2013 and 2015. He had to graft for it.
The closeness of the gaps early on in the race meant Froome felt he needed to take on unexpected stages and parcours, such as the descent finish of Stage 8, and along the flatlands of Stage 11.
Such a differing of tactics from Froome made the race interesting, leading to questions as to whether these attacks were a sign of Froome feeling challenged by the form of his other competitors. While such a challenge was never really posed, such desperate attacks showed that Froome was worried for the first time in any of his Tour de France wins.
Finally, as I mentioned above, the youth that have come through to perform at this year’s Tour give hope that in the future, the Tour will not just be a one-team domination.
Boring? No. Exciting? Partially. Intriguing? Very much so.
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