Froome and the criminal worms

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  • The star of Israel ran all year long affected by an intestinal disease caused by parasites called schistosiomasis, which kills 200,000 people a year in the world.

  • The four-time Tour winner was running out of strength and illness was the reason why he finished the French round more than four hours behind Pogacar in an anonymous 133rd position.

It was not normal for Chris Froome, with four Tours, two Laps and a Giro on his back, to arrive in Paris, on July 18, 4 hours and 12 minutes from Tadej Pogacar in an anonymous 133 place in the general classification. Nor that he hadn’t been seen even on a getaway; never in distinguished squad positions. The best result is the 72nd place achieved in the 15th stage, the one that reached Andorra.

In the Tour, for being the rider who had achieved four victories and the only one who for now aspires to the fifth victory of Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault e Indurain, I captured the images on television many days. But it was always the same shot, in which you could see Froome get off the hook at the first ramp or criminal acceleration in the platoon.

Was it normal for a champion of the test to suffer so much? How could that cyclist who had dominated France be so bad? He never spoke of retirement and did not even look for the excuse of the serious fall he suffered in 2019 in training during the Critérium del Dauphiné, a race he has won three times. In July, he would attend to the press and occasionally speak of “intestinal problems”. But nothing else. He was not a runner looking for excuses to defend such a low level of cycling.

Now it has been known. There was a pathological reason for their poor performance: the worms, the parasites that moved through their intestines. Froome During this year, it has suffered the harmful effects of schistosomiasis, a common parasitic disease of sub-Saharan Africa, which came to America in the slave trade, which affects 200 million people and kills 200,000 infected each year. However, he has treatment, to the point that the British cyclist has already overcome the disease.

“Froome The entire Tour was blocked due to parasites. He told us that his tour was being the most difficult and that he was expending much more energy than in any of the ones played before. It was not normal, “he explains to the portal ‘Cyclingnews’ Sylvan Adams, owner of the Israel Up-Nation team, which leads Froome, and that he’s a bike-crazy billionaire.

These last days Froome and his teammates have been promoting cycling for Israel. There the British runner, who had already suffered from the disease at the beginning of the last decade and who could be infected by drinking water during one of his regular visits to Kenya (where he was born) or South Africa (where he lived), only admitted that this parasitic ailment “could being the source of my intestinal problems on the Tour. “

“At the end of this season Chris she began to feel much better, coinciding with the negative schistosomiasis tests, and her performance improved visibly. He was very happy to have helped his Canadian partner Michael Woods to qualify ninth in Milan-Turin, and he is still very happy because he believes that the ‘old’ Froome & rdquor; will return, he adds Adams.

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The old’ Froome He is the one who refuses to get off his bike, the one who did not hide when he crossed the goals of the Tour much more behind than could be expected and the one who has signed a cycling season that is already a compliment to describe it as discreet. And it is also the Froome who does not renounce the dream of a new Tour, a goal that is classified as epic, practically an impossible mission with the 37 years that he will have in July and before an army of young protesters led by Pogacar.

“Now I just want to try to be the one from before. That is my goal for next year. I want to be competitive again because I have not been in my position in 2021. I have helped the team. But it was not my my level,” he emphasizes Froome to the ‘Velonews’ portal. So far, he has already defeated the criminal worms.



Reference-www.elperiodico.com

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