The Team Sky rider could not capture yesterday’s individual time trial through the streets of Marseille, making him only the Tour’s seventh outright winner without a single stage victory en route to Paris.
But Froome’s third place yesterday behind Poland’s Maciej Bodnar, well ahead of the other yellow jersey contenders, left the 32-year-old finally sure of netting the overall victory.
With painfully narrow margins of less than 30 seconds on his two closest rivals prior to yesterday, a delighted and relieved Froome said afterwards that this year’s Tour had gone down to almost the final wire.
“It was all still to race for out on the road today so I’m just blown away, it’s amazing,” said Froome.
“This has been the closest and most hard-fought (Tour) of them all.”
Despite the stress levels, on yesterday’s final time trial, Froome never seemed out of control, his typical high-speed, low-gear pedalling style seeing him whizz up the toughest single climb near Marseille’s Notre-Dame de la Garde cathedral.
Froome then received a morale boost as he bore down on French challenger Romain Bardet who struggled badly in the time trial’s second half.
When the two crossed the finishing line in the Marseille Stade Velodrome, Froome was so close behind Bardet French television did not have time to flash up the Briton’s time.
But the thumbs up from Sky team staff waiting at the finish, as he eased to a halt, told Froome everything he needed to know.
The Briton’s most dangerous challenger, 2012 Olympic silver medallist Rigoberto Uran, did well enough to oust Bardet from second overall.
But Uran was always too far off the pace to threaten Froome.
