Tour’s in the bag for Froome

Well, its all over but the final stage. Last nights stage is a finish on the Champs Ellysee, and if nothing else, its nothing but a procession for the King of France and an unofficial world championships for sprinters.

Unless the final stage is an individual time trial, the race is only on for the sprinters and breakaway artists. For the Froome and the rest of the pretenders in the top 10, it's all over. No yellow jersey has lost it on the final day that ended in a sprint.

It was a perfect race for team SKY and Chris Froome. No one planned the race down to its minute details than SKY. Maybe except for stage 19 when Froome’s front wheel slipped under a road marking and the maillot jaune crashing hard or when he crashed behind the motorbike, it was all fine and dandy for Froome.

Consider this, Froome still has a full complement of teammates and two or three of his teammates are strong enough to challenge the top 10 riders. Add the exceptional talent of Froome and there you have it, the Tour de France handed to the Kenyan-born Brit in a silver platter.

This has lead to some fans saying that this Tour is boring because of Froome’s dominance. I say BS, I say its boring because Froome’s competition didn’t show up. They passed their papers as early as stage 8, when Froome’s rival numero uno, Nairo Quintana, allowed the Brit to get away on a descent.

And where was Quintana? Well, he was suffering from a mysterious allergy. If you ask me, Quintana simply was overmatched this year. He should have raced against Froome in the early season, to measure his fitness vs. Froome. I guess his win in the Rota du Sud, a small French race, probably led him to believe that he could beat Froome, especially after he won the time-trial.

Team MOVISTAR, Quianta’s team, looked like amateurs compared to SKY. If the Spanish outfit is to challenge SKY, it should look hard on themselves and go back to the drawing board. If not for Jon Izaguirre’s win last Saturday, then MOVISTAR’s Tour would have been a debacle.

Team SKY reminds me of US POSTAL, how they controlled the race and how they bought off the competition. Remember the then up and coming Roberto Heras? Well, Postal bought out his contract with KELME, where he was the team leader, and gave him a fat contract to work as a domestic for lance Armstrong. That’s what SKY did with up and coming Tour rider, Mikel Landa. In last years Giro d’Italia, Landa almost won, despite working for his team leader Fabio Aru.

And so, the Tour draws to a close What can we expect for 2017? Alberto Contador will be here next year although I don’t think he has it anymore. Aru, Quintana, Richie Porte will stronger. The there are a few riders that’s coming up like Tom Dumoulin and Ilnur Zakarin. Of the contenders, I like Zakarin.

The Tour will never be boring, poor competition makes it so.