Tour de France: Why Chris Froome is in control

Perfect first week

Froome has kept on the front foot since the opening weekend, when he mastered the tricky stages through Brittany without any time loss, without crashes and without undue stress. In contrast, Alberto Contador’s crash on days one and two and Richie Porte’s disastrously timed puncture just before the uphill finish at Cherbourg put two key rivals under pressure immediately. As early as the first Wednesday’s stage through the Massif Central, Sky looked to be stronger than Nairo Quintana’s Movistar.

The predominantly dry, hot weather will have done him no harm either, as Froome is known to function better in those conditions than in the wet and cold. And Geraint Thomas’s loss of time helped too, by making the hierarchy at Sky even more clear than it was at the start.

Taking everyone by surprise at Luchon

The last thing you want if you are trying to win the Tour de France is to be caught napping, as Quintana and all the others were when Froome made his surprise attack over the top of the Col de Peyresourde and down the descent into Luchon. The time gain wasn't huge – just 23 seconds – but the psychological impact cannot be overestimated.

The fact that Quintana and company could have kept in contact with Froome had they been more alert will have hurt, and then there are the underlying messages: Froome would take time at any and every opportunity, rather than waiting for the set pieces – the mountain-top finishes, the time trials – as was the case in the past.

To beat Froome his rivals needed to catch the double winner off guard, but he turned the tables on them.

Getting through the crosswinds better than anyone else

Froome’s second attack, on the road to Montpellier, gained him a mere 12 seconds, but it was critical. It underlined that he had survived the gruelling windy conditions in physically better shape than any of the other favourites, and for that, the big workhorses in his team deserve the highest praise, because this was where Luke Rowe, Ian Stannard, Thomas and Vasil Kiryienka came into their own.

Quintana didn’t have the heavyweights he needed around him – the rider he should have had here was Britain’s Alex Dowsett, who has the horsepower for this kind of day. “The four windy days [Montpellier to Villars-les-Dombes] were infernal; they massacred Quintana,” believes the Trek directeur sportif Alain Gallopin. “He will take time to recover.” The time gain was almost incidental, but the message was the same as at Luchon.

Having the strongest team in the race

Sky were as strong as the best teams – Etixx, Tinkoff – on the stage to Montpellier, which called for completely different physical characteristics to the climbing days, but there they have also been the strongest.

To date, they have been able to keep Thomas on a watching brief, apart from on the Montpellier stage where his input in the final break was critical. Overall, Thomas has not put in the work he did last year on the flat and the mountain work has been mainly done by Wout Poels, Mikel Nieve, Mikel Landa and Sergio Henao.

Crucially, having two or three riders with him on the hardest mountains has meant that Froome can apply Sky’s traditional tactic of having a strong climber go uphill so fast that no one can make an attack stick. “It’s a race where everyone has to follow because they simply can’t attack,” said the French rider Pierre Rolland.

Closest rivals haven’t his calibre

The time trial in the Ardèche and the two mountain-top finishes to date – at Arcalis and Chalet Reynard – show that physically Froome is the strongest rider in the race to date. Tellingly, he said on Monday that neither of those uphill stage had "a real mountain-top finish" and certainly neither was as severe as the ones where he had taken the Tour apart in 2013 and 2015. The loss of Contador through injury, Thibaut Pinot's virus, and the fact that Vincenzo Nibali has his mind elsewhere having won the Giro d'Italia meant that three seasoned rivals have gone missing, making the race infinitely simpler to manage.

With all respect to Bauke Mollema and Adam Yates, neither of them is in the same register as any of that trio. Quintana remains the biggest threat. Guardian Service