Four-time Tour de France winner Froome retires
· Yahoo Sports
Four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome has brought an end to his illustrious career in professional cycling.
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The 41-year-old British rider has not raced since a serious crash in August 2025 when he collided head-on with a road sign at more than 30mph and suffered five broken ribs, a collapsed lung and a lumbar vertebrae fracture.
Froome's wife later said doctors discovered a pericardial rupture - an injury where the sac that surrounds the heart is torn - during surgery and were able to repair it.
"Unfortunately, there was that crash last summer - that was not the way I wanted it to end. But even then, I knew it was over," Froome told Belgian broadcaster Sporza.
The Kenyan-born rider retires as one of the most decorated cyclists in history, winning seven Grand Tours with Team Sky (now Team Ineos).
His four Tour de France victories came in 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017. Only four men - Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault, Miguel Indurain and Eddy Merckx - have won more Tour de France titles.
He also won the Giro d'Italia in 2018 and Vuelta a Espana in 2011 and 2017, and claimed two Olympic bronze medals in the individual time trial in 2012 and 2016.
Froome was made an OBE for his services to cycling in 2015.
One of the most memorable moments of Froome's career came during his 2016 win at the Tour de France.
Just over one kilometre from the finish line on stage 12, the Briton was forced to run without a bicycle following a crash with a motorbiked on Mont Ventoux.
With his bike unrideable and his team car carrying a replacement bike several minutes behind, he set off on foot towards the finish line.
He attempted to use a neutral service bike before switching to a third bike from the Team Sky car about 200 metres later, eventually crossing the line shaking his head.
"I told myself, 'I don't have a bike and my car is five minutes behind with another bike - it's too far away, I'm going to run a bit'," he said afterwards.
In 2017, Froome was the subject of an anti-doping case when he was found to have more than the allowed level of legal asthma drug salbutamol in his urine.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), which worked closely with the UCI, later accepted there was no breach and recommended the case was dropped.
Froome left Team Ineos in 2020 when they decided not to renew his contract and joined Israel-Premier Tech.
He worked to return to full fitness following a 2019 crash in which he sustained multiple injuries but struggled to regain the form he had with his former team.
Froome was left out of Israel-Premier Tech's past three Tour de France races and was released from the team in November.
Most clinical Tour de France winner at his peak - analysis
Froome belongs to the ages as the joint second-most successful Tour de France winner, on four wins with the current modern day legend Tadej Pogacar of Slovenia.
Born in Nairobi, Kenya, to British parents, Froome switched nationality in 2008 and signed for Team Sky in 2010 as part of Sir Dave Brailsford's high-budget project to be the first British team to win the Tour de France.
Alongside his domination of the yellow jersey, Froome also won time trial bronze medals for Great Britain at the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympic Games, as well as bronze in the time trial at the Road World Championships in Bergen, Norway, in 2017.
As part of his Grand Tour achievements, he won two stages of the Giro d'Italia and five stages of the Vuelta, plus he won three editions of the Criterium du Dauphine.
But it was the sport's greatest race, the Tour de France, for which Froome saved himself.
Froome was the beneficiary of the famous 'Sky Train' - an ultra-disciplined version of burning through a road cycling team's domestiques at a pace none of their competitors could cope with - thanks in part to a fitness regime and a scientific approach the sport had not seen before.
Froome once said: "I knew I had a chance to make a big impact on this sport when I started training with Italian teams. They would finish a ride and then hit the beer and pizza."
But as clinical as his victories were with Team Sky, Froome's own race craft often made the difference.
On the 2016 Tour, he descended at a frightening pace, crouching down on to the top tube of his bike in a 'super tuck' position, while still pedalling, to assume the most aerodynamic position - a technique now banned over safety concerns.
His greatest moment might have come during 2018's Giro d'Italia win after a comeback that included winning stage 19 by a staggering three minutes.
Froome never appeared to fully recover from his 2019 crash, and much of his time with the Israeli team saw him suffer complications from the injuries he sustained, which included a broken femur and hip.
His best result was a distant third on stage 12 of the 2022 Tour de France in which Tom Pidcock took victory at the summit of Alpe d'Huez following his famous high-speed descent off the Col du Galibier.
After 2022 Froome never returned to the race that meant so much to him, and for which he is so fondly remembered.