Of all the stories Chris Froome told about a childhood spent in Nairobi, none was more vivid or life-affirming than his recollection of training rides with his friend and mentor David Kinjah. Thirteen years older than Froome, Kinjah was the first black African rider to get a professional contract with a European team. In Italy they called him Leone Nero, the black lion.
On this particular morning, they set out from Mai-a-Ihii, to the west of Nairobi, where Kinjah lives in a small tin hut. He is 29, Froome is 16. They are headed for the Ngong Hills; down through Dagoretti, skirting the Kibiku Forest, past Ngong town and into the hills. Though Froome is raw and inexperienced, he thinks that on the hills, he can ride away from his friend.
Sometimes Kinjah lets him take four or five bike lengths before smilingly reeling him in. They come to Point Lamwia, where Karen Blixen, the author of Out of Africa, buried her lover Denys Finch Hatton, and though Froome should be taking in the view, he is thinking only of his prey and his eyes are fixed on the road beneath him. He is a dreamer, a slightly mad but very determined dreamer.
Froome with his mentor, Kinjah, centre right, along with Kenyan cyclists of his former racing team, the Safari Simbaz, in 2013
SIMON MAINA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
After about 120 kilometres they stop at Magadi, a small town in the Rift Valley. An hour or so later his mum, Jane, comes in her car with food and drinks. Kinjah tells him to put his bike in his mum’s car because the long ride home will be too much, but he knows his young friend is never going to do that. The kid thinks he can take the black lion on the way back.
It happens on a fissured and potholed descent. One particularly bad jolt and Froome’s helmet unclips, falling between them. Somehow it gets caught up in his mentor’s front wheel and poor Kinjah is now flying through the air, a dreadlocked missile landing on his elbows and knees. He leaves a lot of flesh and blood on the road. As for the kid, he wants to disappear into the fissure beneath his feet.
They return to Magadi, get to the local hospital, where the wounds are bandaged. For the night they rest in a cheap hotel on the shores of Lake Magadi. On the ride back the next day, Kinjah goes hard enough to make Froome forget his guilt and just wants to beat him. Kinjah, though, is really riding hard because he wants the kid to know there’s no easy route to get to where he wants to get to.
Froome also suffered a crash in February this year in the UAE, where he broke his collarbone…
DARIO BELINGHERI/GETTY IMAGES
…while his bike was severely mangled
DARIO BELINGHERI/GETTY IMAGES
To get from the Ngong Hills to winning the Tour de France four times, La Vuelta twice and the Giro d’Italia once was beyond extraordinary. Froome’s career is like no other. He was 26 by the time Team Sky realised they had a rider worth keeping on their roster. He was 28 when he won the Tour for the first time and yet there was still enough time to deliver a spectacular career. Only Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Induráin have won the Tour more times than him.
It is likely that the horrible crash he suffered while on a training ride in the south of France last week will be the one that brings his career to an end. He is 40 and although the messages had been mixed, there was a good chance that even without the crash, this was to be his final season. His contract with Israel Premier Tech (IPT) is up at the end of the year.
Froome won his first Tour de France in 2013 — a year prior he’d felt resentment towards team boss Brailsford, left, for a lack of protection during the early stages
BRYN LENNON/GETTY IMAGES
Wednesday’s crash was serious. A fractured bone in his lower back, a punctured lung and five broken ribs will take time, especially for one who had an even more serious crash in the days before the 2019 Critérium du Dauphiné. He was 34 then and his team, Ineos Grenadiers, were soon looking to move on without him. His time with IPT has been difficult as he couldn’t be the rider he was before the 2019 crash. As fans, we might have preferred for him to call it a day then but as a professional he was entitled to keep going for as long as he wished. My feeling is that he couldn’t let go of something he loved doing.
Riding his bike, yes, but more than that, racing. The way he attacked on the descent from the Col de Peyresourde in the 2016 Tour. As much as the Tours that he and Team Sky dominated, we will also recall the toughness that was also a part of a polite and well-spoken young man. His insubordination on Bradley Wiggins’s 2012 Tour was a classic of its kind. Midway through the race, finding himself in second place overall, just over two minutes down on Wiggins, he couldn’t just play the domestique role. There was at the time some resentment towards the team boss Dave Brailsford who’d promised that he would be a protected rider in the early part of the Tour yet failed to deliver on that.
Froome suffered a puncture close to the end of the first stage and no team-mate was asked to wait for him. He lost 1min 25sec that day, feeling it had been stolen from him. So when the chance came to up the pace on the climb to the finish at La Toussuire on stage 11, he did so and suddenly Wiggins was in trouble.
Froome didn’t shirk from confrontation and was seen as the coming man in 2012 despite Wiggins’ victory at the Tour
PA WIRE
It was then that all hell broke loose. The Sky sport director Sean Yates ordered him to wait, which Froome did, but what he’d done was considered nothing less than treachery. Yates was furious and told him he had been out of order. Brailsford summoned him to his room and delivered the same message, though more politely and with a £200,000 bonus for finishing second and compensation for the mistake on the opening stage.
That evening they had meeting after meeting and again the next morning; Brailsford, Yates, Tim Kerrison, Wiggins and Froome all together in a closed-off room at the back of the team bus. Froome believed that Brailsford and Yates were just trying to appease Wiggins. In front of the other three on the bus, he turned on Wiggins: “Listen, if you’ve got a problem with me, come straight to me, don’t go round to other people and make the problem worse.”
That was Froome. He didn’t shirk from confrontation. Brailsford knew he was the coming man and with the adroitness of Lester Piggott, he would switch horses by the next Tour de France. Froome was then the sole leader of the Tour team and Wiggins was dispatched to the Giro d’Italia.
The rest is part of cycling history and Froome’s distinguished place in that story. From this latest crash, he deserves to make a full and speedy recovery.