Team Sky riders and staff say that Chris Froome’s collision with a car today in training is a reminder of how dangerous it can be for cyclists on open roads.
Froome posted a photograph on Twitter this morning of his smashed black Pinarello, Shimano wheels bent and top tube cracked after an incident near the rider’s Monaco home.
“It’s a reminder, it shows how dangerous it can be,” team-mate Geraint Thomas told Cycling Weekly.
Thomas rolled to the start line of stage four of the Giro d’Italia. He shook his head perhaps thinking about the string of recent incidents such as the death of Michele Scarponi in a training crash last month.
>>> Chris Froome’s descending position slower than Peter Sagan’s or Marco Pantani’s, study finds
“I only saw it five minutes before getting off the bus. It didn’t look good at all. I’ll speak to him later today.”
Froome escaped unharmed and said he was “rammed on purpose by an impatient driver.” He went to the police station afterwards to report it and found a new bike to continue training, according to trainer Tim Kerrison, who was nearby at the team base above Monaco.
“You can’t always be scared when you are riding on the roads, but with the situation like you see today with Froome, you think a lot about how we are at risk on the road,” Mikel Landa said.
“I had goosebumps [seeing the photograph]. I thought about Scarponi. In an accident, we are always going to be the one who’s worse off.”
Watch: Chris Froome – how I won the 2016 Tour de France
“Our doctor saw an article first in Spanish or Basque, which made the incident seem worse than it is,” sports director Brett Lancaster said. “We heard later on that he was OK, but it is scary.
“It sounds like someone went up the curb and followed him and hit him. That’s scary stuff. That’s the world that we live in now, there are many angry drivers out there.”
“It’s scary [when you see the photograph],” sports director Dario Cioni added. “It’s scary when we hear of the incident a couple of days ago in Spain, it’s scary when you think of Scarponi.
“Today especially with the traffic there is, it seems it is even more dangerous, sometimes you need to just be lucky.”
Froome is home training after the Tour de Romandie and preparing for the Critérium du Dauphiné in June and the Tour de France in July.
“When you have children you start thinking about it more,” said Lancaster. “That was probably one of the reasons I retired in the end, crashes in races also. It’s a beautiful sport, but you are unfortunately always looking always over your back.”
Landa added, “It’s just about having everyone thinking on the same page and respect, cars for riders, riders for cars.”
