Chris Froome, Naked and On a Bike
The four-time Tour de France winner looks comfortable in his own skin.
The four-time Tour de France winner looks comfortable in his own skin. – By Selene Yeager
Today in The Times Sport #MySportingBody ? @marc.aspland
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Of his body shape, Froome told The Times of London, “I can recognise the proportions are ridiculous. Skinny upper body, massive thighs – I do feel a bit ridiculous looking in the mirror. That’s what it takes, but I am looking forward to getting in the gym when I retire and doing some bicep curls, getting some shoulders to balance things out a little.”
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It’s not a trick of the camera: Froome is actually a bit heavier than he was standing on the finish line on the Champs-Élysées earlier this year. Now, a couple of weeks after the Vuelta a España, he will have certainly put on a bit more weight as his body recovers and normalizes from the rigors of the season.
“As soon as a Tour is over, you’d expect him to put on another two to three kilograms,” says Hunter Allen, founder of the Peaks Coaching Group and co-author of Training & Racing with a Power Meter. What Allen finds more revealing in this already-revealing image is Froome’s enormous chest cavity. “He looks like a greyhound!” Allen says. “Look at that chest cavity and tell me that guy isn’t all lungs.”
It is pretty impressive to note how his expansive chest wall nearly brushes his bulging quads as he pedals out of the saddle in the shot. But it may be less surprising when you realise that Froome has an off-the-charts VO2 max (the maximum volume of oxygen an athlete can use) of 84 mL per kilogram a minute. By comparison, 54 mL per kilogram for a man his age would be considered “superior.” In elite cycling ranks, 70 mL per kilogram and above is generally the norm.
So kudos to Froome for putting himself out there. We look forward to what he’ll show us next.