Chris Froome hasn't really been showing the legs that we used to see before his near career-ending crash in the Critérium du Dauphiné 2019, but he has shown a possible glimpse into what's to come after getting into the breakaway on stage four of the Tour of the Alps.
Froome (Israel Start-Up Nation) spent almost all of his winter off-season in California as he continued his rehab from his crash while on a recon of the Dauphiné time trial. The Kenyan-born British rider has also been keeping fans up to date with how his training is going on his new YouTube channel.
However, his racing has yet to get anyone excited as he slowly trains his way back to where he wants to be to attempt to battle for yellow at the Tour de France once again.
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Froome decided to go on the attack for the first time this year on Wednesday's (April 22) stage of the Tour of the Alps to get into the breakaway after the original move was brought back on the slopes of the highest point in the race. Froome then went with a move that included Spanish champion Luis León Sánchez (Astana-Premier Tech) and former team-mate Nicolas Roche (DSM).
Speaking in a team press release after the stage, Froome said: "I think this was the first time I have been in a breakaway since the Giro d’Italia of 2018. I really enjoyed being up there today, testing the legs a bit. Especially as the break went away on a quite hard section after a bunch of attacks.
"It was a shame that we never got much of a gap but it was still a good experience to be up there again. I can feel that the condition is slowly improving and I’m pretty happy with how the legs are feeling."
The break was not allowed much time at all with the maximum gap sitting at around 2-30 before overall leader Simon Yates' squad, Team BikeExchange upped the pace coming up to the final climb of the day catching the break before even hitting the bottom slopes.
Froome eventually finished down in 82nd around his other breakaway companions at over 14 minutes down, meaning he sits in 94th place overall, 41-36 down on Yates going into the final stage.
The four-time Tour de France winner is currently set to ride the upcoming Tour de Romandie next week, starting on April 27 and ending on May 2.
Tim Bonville-Ginn is one of Cycling Weekly's content writers for the web team responsible for writing stories on racing, tech, updating evergreen pages as well as the weekly email newsletter.
Bonville-Ginn started working in cycling journalism while still at school and university for a voluntary site based on Twitter before also doing slots for Eurosport's online web team and has been on location at the Tour de Yorkshire, Tour of Britain, UCI World Championships and various track events. He then joined the Cycling Weekly team in late February of 2020.
When not writing stories for the site, Bonville-Ginn doesn't really switch off his cycling side as he watches every race that is televised as well as being a rider himself and a regular user of the game Pro Cycling Manager.
He rides a Specialized Tarmac SL4 when out on his local roads back in West Yorkshire as well as in northern Hampshire with the hills and mountains being his preferred terrain.
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