Sky's spectacular week leaves Froome in a dream

Chris Froome said he's living a dream after describing his Sky team's start to the Tour de France as "spectacular".

The 30-year-old Briton admitted he had expected to lose time to some of his main rivals during the tricky first week of the 2015 Tour but instead he reached Monday's first rest day wearing the leader's yellow jersey.

And with the mountains to begin on Tuesday, Froome said the opening salvos could not have gone any better, particularly given his nightmare last year when he crashed out of the race with a broken wrist on the fifth stage.

"Coming into this race, there was a lot of last year still in the back of my mind," admitted the Kenyan-born rider.

"The first week was one of the biggest concerns. The big thing was not to lose any time to any of my contenders, so to be in this position in yellow and to have gained substantial amounts of time on a lot of my rivals, it's a dream scenario.

"I have to thank the team for that. They carried me through nine days in spectacular fashion. They've been there every step of the way through cobbles, wind and rain."

Sky manger David Brailsford said his outfit had answered every question asked of them.

"We've had a fantastic first week. We talked a lot about the first week being a series of one-day races, questions were asked of us and the guys stood up and answered every one for what the expectation was," said Brailsford.

"Collectively we've done brilliantly and we couldn't be in a better place in this first rest day."

Tuesday's 167km run from Tarbes to La Pierre-Saint Martin only has one tough climb -- the 15.3km 'hors categorie' ascent to the finish with an average 7.4 percent gradient -- but coming straight after a rest day, Froome says it's vital.

"It's quite a key stage tomorrow, it's not as hard as other mountain days coming up but it's the first mountain-top finish and everyone's going to be looking at this as a gauge to how things will go over the next two weeks," he said.
Source: AFP