Froome crashes during Tour, carries on with teammate’s bike

Froome was also slowed by a motor bike crash on Ventoux, prompting him to run up the road when he saw that his bike was damaged.

“Chris Froome was very, very good”, he added.

Four years ago, Froome’s former teammate Bradley Wiggins managed to secure a Tour-Olympics double, triumphing in the London 2012 Games’ time trial ahead of German Tony Martin and Froome after posting the first British win at the Tour in July.

Quintana said: “I finish very happy”.

Froome said he will take some days off to recover before competing in a one-day race in London next weekend. And he did it again when he went with (Peter) Sagan in Montpellier.

Froome will become only the eighth man, not including the disgraced Lance Armstrong, to win three or more Tours after his victories in 2013 and 2015, and is the first to defend the Tour title since Miguel Indurain in 1995.

Meanwhile Movistar’s Nairo Quintana, third in the GC standings, conceded Froome had proved too good over the Tour’s entirety.

Spanish rider Jon Izagirre won the rainy penultimate stage by attacking on the slippery descent from the Col de Joux Plane into Morzine.

Plenty of riders were keen to get into the breakaway in the final day in the mountains, and it was a group of 37 which got a gap on the peloton – including plenty of big names.

It was therefore up to the breakaway to produce a spark on an uneventful final day of possible hostilities as Izaguirre won the stage after a daring descent to the finish having crested the final climb, the Col de Joux Plane, alongside 2014 champion Vincenzo Nibali and Colombian Jarlinson Pantano, victor of the 15th stage last Sunday.

Izagirre was in front on the descent when Pantano made a slight error and had to put his left foot to the ground to regain control, which also slowed Nibali.

Spain’s Jon Izagirre and Italy’s Vicenzo Nibali caught up with Alaphilippe and Pantano 14 kilometers from the end, and the stage was decided by a hair-raising descent, in which Pantano very almost slid off the road and down a bank. “I wanted to drop Nibali because I was anxious about him in a sprint”.

“We came here with the Sueno Amarillo (yellow dream) but Froome was the strongest”.

It was his best Tour yet after coming sixth in 2014 and ninth previous year, while he also won Friday’s 19th stage.

A minute of silence was held at the start of the stage to mourn the nine victims of Friday’s shooting rampage in Munich, Germany.

In the peloton, Froome was able to comfortably cruise home surrounded by his Team Sky colleagues, with no other GC contender willing to try and bridge the significant gap and potentially risk losing places with a crash in the hard conditions.

And who knows, we could see Kiwi statesman Greg Henderson deliver his man, Andre Greipel, to victory in Paris on Sunday (Monday NZ time) on the sprinters’ greatest stage in world cycling on the Champs-Elysees in Paris.