Chris Froome is a Kenyan-born British cyclist who currently plays for Team Sky (UCI ProTeam). He made his professional debut in 2007 at the age of 22 with the Konica Minolta team, before moving to Europe where he joined the Barloworld team.
Froome joined Team Sky in 2010 where he soon became one of the team’s greatest cyclists. He is currently the reigning champion of the Tour de France, which he has won four times, among which he has won it three times in a row (2015, 2016 and 2017).
Brief biography
Froome was born in Nairobi, Kenya on November 20, 1985 to Jane and Clive Froome. He is the last of three children (all boys) born to his parents. His father is English and a former field hockey player. He played in the England Under-19 side as a youth.
His maternal grandparents had left England for Kenya to cultivate an agricultural farm. He attended Banda School in Nairobi. After his primary education, he moved to South Africa where he attended St. Andrew’s School; a public school in Bloemfontein, then an independent boarding school in Johannesburg, called St John’s College.
After high school, Froome studied economics at the University of Johannesburg for two years before dropping out to pursue a career in cycling. His older brothers, Jonathan and Jeremy, attended Rugby School in Warwickshire, England.
Career
Chris Froome’s love for cycle racing began at the age of thirteen when his mother took him to his first organized race which was a charity race. It was at this charity event that Froome met David Kinjah, a professional cyclist who would later become his mentor and coach.
In South Africa, Froome began road racing as a specialist climber. In 2006, he represented Kenya at the Commonwealth Games held in Melbourne finishing 25th. This caught the attention of Dave Brailsford, who would later become Sky Team’s principal. Although he met an official at the very start of the time trial while representing Kenya in the under-23 category at the World Road Championships held in Salzburg, Austria in 2006, Chris Froome still finished 36th.
After two years at the University of Johannesburg, Froome dropped out to pursue a career in cycling and the following year (2007). At the age of 22, he joined the South African team, Konica Minolta, and between April and September, he participated in the U23 Nations at the World Cycling Center of the International Cycling Union in Switzerland.
In May he rode for the COE at the Giro delleRegioni and won stage five (this was his first stage race). At the end of that month, he won the sixth stage of the Tour of Japan. In June, he finished second to China’s Haijun Ma in a 26.8 km (16.7 mi) time trial at the ‘B’ world championships in Cape Town.
In July, he won the bronze medal at the Pan-African Games, in Algiers, Algeria. By the end of September, he had placed forty-first in the under-23 time trial at the world championships in Stuttgart.
For the 2008 season, Froome signed with Barloworld – a professional UCI second-tier continental team. His performances during the 2008 season attracted him to British cycling coach Rod Ellingworth, who saw a lot of potential in Chris Froome. In 2009 he joined the British cycling team Team Sky.
In October 2010, Froome at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi represented England by finishing 5th in the clock, just two minutes and twenty seconds behind the winner, David Millar.
His major career breakthrough came in 2011 when he finished second at the 2011 Vuelta a España. In 2012 he won stage seven and finished second overall, behind Wiggins at the 2012 Tour de France.
In 2015, Froome won both the Criterium du Dauphiné and the Tour de France for the second time. His third Tour de France came the following year and he became the first person after Miguel Indurain (1995) to successfully defend his title.
He won his fourth Tour de France in 2017. He recorded further successive victories at the 2017 Vuelta and the 2018 Giro. Chris Froome currently holds the honor of being the first cyclist to win the Tour-Vuelta twice since the passage of the Vuelta to a place of the month of September in the racing calendar. He is also the first to simultaneously hold all three of Bernard Hinault’s 1983 Grand Tour Record jerseys.
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The Chris Froome doping scandal
After post-stage 18 of the Vuelta a España, Froome was subjected to a doping test. In December 2017, the UCI announced that the five times more powerful Grand Tour winner had used almost twice his authorized dosage of the asthma drug salbutamol. He explained that the A and B samples revealed that the concentration of salbutamol found in his urine was above the 1,000 to 1,200 ng/mL threshold for “therapeutic use”.
Explaining why there was excess salbutamol in his system, Froome said his asthma was getting worse at Vuelta, so he followed the team doctor’s recommendations to increase his salbutamol dose.
The test result of the British rider has achieved wide criticism, especially from cyclists. In January 2018 David Lappartient (UCI President) advised Team Sky to suspend Chris until the matter was resolved. Team Sky manager David Brailsford quickly came to Froome’s defence, saying the young cyclist was innocent and had done nothing wrong and felt the case shouldn’t have been made public.
In July 2018, the UCI officially closed the case stating that the rider had provided sufficient evidence to suggest that the sample results from the tests performed did not constitute an AAF.
wife and family
The British cyclist is married to Michelle Cound. The couple first met in 2009 through South African cyclist Daryl Impey. In 2011, they moved to Monaco together and got engaged in March 2013. A year and a few months later, precisely in November 2014, the couple decided to tie the knot. They welcomed their first child (Kellan) together on December 14, 2015. Their second child followed in 2018.
Height, weight, body and other facts
Chris Froome stands at a height of 1.86 m which is 6 ft 1, weighing 69 kg (152 lb; 10.9 m), his other body measurements are unknown.
In 2016, Fromme was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the New Year’s Award for service to cycling.
The cyclist dedicated his 2013 Tour de France to his mother, who died just five weeks after his debut in 2008. She died of cancer.