Four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome confirms retirement from cycling
Briton says he "knew it was over" after life-threatening crash last summer
Four-time Tour de France champion Chris Froome has confirmed his retirement from professional cycling.
The 41-year-old, who has not raced since last August, confirmed the news on Thursday at an event in Barcelona for Škoda, the car brand for whom he is an ambassador.
According to a report in Sporza, Froome was asked directly if he had retired, to which he responded: “Yes.”
“Unfortunately, there was that fall last summer. That wasn't the way I wanted it to end. But even then, I knew it was over,” he said.
Froome was airlifted to hospital in August last year after a training crash in which he suffered five broken ribs, a spine fracture, a collapsed lung, and a pericardial rupture, a life-threatening tear to the sac that surrounds the heart.
His last race came two weeks before the crash, at the Tour de Pologne, where he finished 68th overall.
Froome's contract at Israel-Premier Tech was not renewed at the end of 2026. He has been without a team for the past six months.
The announcement of his retirement comes days before the start of the 113th edition of the Tour de France in Barcelona, Spain.
Perhaps the most famous of Froome's 46 career wins came over the Colle delle Finestre at the 2018 Giro d'Italia.
Froome’s legacy will last as the greatest Grand Tour racer of his generation. During his 19-year-career, he won four Tours de France, two Vueltas a España, and a Giro d’Italia, making him one of only eight men in history to win all three races, even holding all the titles at the same time in 2018.
He is best known for being the leader of Team Sky, for whom he rode for 11 seasons between 2010 and 2020. It was during this time that he claimed all of his 46 professional victories, including his remarkable Giro d'Italia comeback in 2018, when he overhauled a more than three-minute gap with a solo attack over the Colle delle Finestre.
His Giro title that year remains his last victory. The following year, 2019, he crashed into a wall in a time trial recon at the Critérium du Dauphiné, suffering fractures to his sternum, neck, femur, elbow and ribs, and losing four pints of blood.
Froome's last of four Tour victories came in 2017.
He joined Israel-Premier Tech on a five-year deal in 2021, but struggled to regain his form. The last Grand Tour he rode was the 2022 Vuelta a España, where he finished 113th overall, and scored a stage best of 71st.
Since leaving Israel-Premier Tech at the start of this year, he has taken on new roles as chief innovation officer of AI training platform Vekta and a cycling ambassador for Škoda.
