The 14 Most Revealing Quotes From Froome’s New Autobiography
Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members! Download the app.
Daniel McMahon / Yuzuru Sunada
We’ve been reading reigning Tour de France champion Chris Froome’s brand-new autobiography, “The Climb,” written with cycling journalist David Walsh and published by Penguin. Here are the most interesting quotes that have jumped out at us so far.
ON TRAINING
“When it’s time to train, I don’t like being on the bike for no reason … I want to take something away from each and every ride, so every day I ask the same questions. What do I want to get out of this ride? How am I testing myself? How am I getting stronger?”
“I think a lot about my competitors when I’m training. I think about how they might be riding, and wonder if they are out with their teammates chatting for five hours. Especially if I’m out on my own that day, doing more focused efforts. I’m not just dawdling along. I like to think I’m doing more than the other guys, even when I don’t know if this is the case or not.”
“In my head I am sure Contador and Nibali and my other rivals are out there training just as hard as I am. So some days I add in intervals or do more specific training or more intensity and tell myself they’d never think to ride like this — this is where I get my advantage.”
“Pain is still the friend that always tells me the truth. Training is still an addiction. For sure there are days when the pain is overwhelming, where I push into the red so far that I wonder if I will come back.”
ON EATING
“I don’t count calories or know the values of most things; I just let my instinct guide me as to what is the right amount to eat. My instinct always says the right amount is less than I feel like eating. In a previous life I think my instinct lived in a remote monastery.”
ON DOPING
“My early cycling idols tended to test positive and die in my affections.”
“I am not a student of Lance Armstrong or that period in cycling. He doesn’t interest me and that era doesn’t interest me.”
“I’m clean. To be honest, I struggle to see how I could be any cleaner. I want a clean sport. I want to be open and honest about what has happened in the past and I want the technology that proves I am clean.”
“You think I’m guilty. Can you prove it? No. I know I’m clean. Can I prove it? No. You heard it all before from Lance Armstrong. Well, I’m not Lance Armstrong. You won’t get fooled again. Not by me you won’t, ever.”
ON THE COL DE LA MADONE, A CLIMB NEAR NICE, FRANCE
“The Col de la Madone de Gorbio is a fallen woman. Her name is tainted by the sins of her former lover. I live nearby and have to admit there is some dark attraction in her notoriety … The Col de la Madone was Lance Armstrong’s test mountain. He loved her so much he named a bike after her. He talked about her so much that riders still want to test themselves up her slopes. We know the Col is blameless and beautiful.”
ON WIGGINS
“I was coming to the conclusion that if you were riding out to battle through early-morning mists with your standards flying high, Sir Bradley Wiggins was a man you would want at your side. Because after lunch he just might not be bothered.”
“We rode around him and his moods like he was a traffic island.”
“Listen, Brad looks like Paul Weller; I look like Tintin. Maybe we’re not created to appear in the same story.”
ON CYCLING
“Cycling is my job but it also feels spiritual and connected and it’s all I ever wanted to do.”
