PIERREFITTE-NESTALAS, France — The Tour de France has seen it before, and not all that long ago. A team leader and teammates rub out the rest of the field on a difficult mountain climb and yet seem remarkably fresh at the finish.
After Chris Froome, the overall race leader, and his Team Sky teammates crushed the rest of the field on Tuesday’s final climb, the comparisons with Lance Armstrong and his teams immediately sprouted. The speculation that Froome, like Armstrong, may not be on the level about drugs, grew Wednesday with the release of a second video apparently containing leaked, confidential performance data from the British rider. Although the data indicate nothing obviously incriminating, Froome’s doubters claim that it is more ammunition against him.
Asked about the skeptics after the hot and mountainous stage of about 117 miles from Pau to Cauterets on Wednesday, Froome kept his emotional cool.
Those people should come watch us train, see how I lead my life, he said.
Stage 11 was in many ways the reverse of Stage 10, in which Froome and his teammate Richie Porte emerged as by far the strongest riders of the Tour on the final climb. On Wednesday, Froome’s teammates spent the first two hours or so, which are not broadcast, closing down breaks that might have threatened his hold on the race.
The first two hours were brutal today, Froome said. It’s a shame there isn’t more coverage of that part of the race. That’s really exciting racing.
Once the pack was under control and the temperature rose as high as 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the race approached a state of calmness as it crossed over two of the most famous passes in the Pyrenees, the 4,885-foot Col d’Aspin and the 6,939-foot Col du Tourmalet.
Rafal Majka, a Polish climber, set off on his own from a break with Froome and the other top riders and was first across the summit of the Tourmalet. Defying the stereotype of climbers as poor descenders, Majka’s death-defying drop down the mountain was made even more perilous by cows that had wandered onto the road.
No threat to Froome’s overall race lead, Majka, whose day job is supporting the two-time winner Alberto Contador, was left unmolested by Sky and finished alone. Froome, who arrived 5 minutes 21 seconds later, picked up the pace at the line to lead his group in.
The American Tejay van Garderen, of BMC, was in Froome’s group and remained in second place over all, 2:52 behind.
Antoine Vayer, who is fanning the flames of the controversy about Froome, has spent the last 16 years as an antidoping thorn in the side of the cycling establishment. A coach and physical education teacher in Brittany, France, Vayer is largely known for working with Christophe Bassons, the only rider on the Festina team who was cleared of doping after the police drug raids on the Tour in 1998.
At first, Vayer suggested that riders, including Armstrong, were doping by comparing their times in famous mountain climbs with historical records. His move into video, however, provides much more data, if not more clarity.
His video of Froome climbing Mont Ventoux during the 2013 Tour included his heart rate, power in watts, pedaling rate and speed. On Wednesday, he posted a similar video from the Vuelta a España last year.
In an interview, Vayer said that someone he declined to name had leaked him the data and that the video was simply intended to be an alternative to traditional cycling broadcasts.
It’s a tool to show the public so that they can watch cycling with something other than a commentator, he said comparing it to car performance data shown by broadcasters at Formula One races. I say nothing. I just put this out as a tool to appreciate cycling in a different way. It’s very interesting.
When asked if he found the data consistent with Froome’s doping denials, Vayer responded: I’m a coach. If I saw this from one of my riders, I would say: ‘Go back home, I don’t want you on the team.’
He said that Froome’s data measurements were in conflict with one another and that his heart rate was improbably low.
I would like to have Froome’s explanation, he said.
After the stage, Froome offered one. He said that his maximum heart rate always falls to a much lower level after two weeks of a stage race. That’s pretty normal, for me at least.
He said that Vayer claimed, based on no evidence, that a small motor might have been hidden inside Froome’s bike on the Mont Ventoux climb. Speculation about mechanical doping has been around for several years in cycling circles, and bikes are now randomly inspected for motors. But no equivalent of a positive test has ever been found.
If it was mechanical, that would be good: no doping, Vayer said.
Vayer has repeatedly called on all teams to follow the lead of some individual riders and regularly release all of the data captured by their cycle computers and heart rate monitors as well as the power meters built into their cranks or pedals.
Froome, however, dismissed that idea.
I’ve certainly got no plans of just releasing data out into the public, he said. You can see the effects of the supposed leaked file that went out there. That’s done no one any good. It doesn’t prove one thing or another thing.
He said, however, that he was open-minded to potentially doing some physiological testing at some point after the Tour, at whatever point suits.
He added that such tests might be conducted by an independent expert.
There would be some interesting things that come out of it and maybe as a team we might even learn something from it, Froome said.
Vayer acknowledged that he might not be all that popular with Froome or Sky. But he said that as a cyclist and a coach he views himself as their ally, not an enemy.
I want to defend cycling, I want to defend Sky, he said, adding that more publicly available data would make that possible. I’m a coach and I want to believe in cycling.