Chris Froome “Grabbed Nibali by the scruff of the neck” – Luke Rowe reveals wild stories from Team Sky at Tour de France

Former INEOS Grenadiers road captain Luke Rowe has lifted the lid on a heated exchange between Chris Froome and Vincenzo Nibali in his new memoir, Road Captain: My Life at the Heart of the Peloton.

In an excerpt published of his new book shared by Cyclingnews, Rowe recounts a moment during the 2015 Tour de France that escalated beyond the usual tensions of the race. The incident followed a chaotic cobbled stage to Cambrai, where Tony Martin had just claimed the yellow jersey from Froome. A crash ensued involving several riders, including Martin, who broke his collarbone, as well as Froome and Nibali.

“As Nibali stood up, he took his bottle out of its cage and launched it at Froomey before riding off, because Nibali thought he was to blame for bringing them down,” Rowe writes.

Rowe, seeing photographers nearby and Froome without a working bike, handed his own over to his teammate. “I said, ‘Listen, mate, just take my bike and get to the finish’... I told him, ‘Just get away from the riff raff.’ I could see as I gave him my bike that he was fuming.”

Rowe caught up to the finish later, where the team soigneur told him Froome had blown straight past without stopping. Rowe had a feeling he knew exactly where Froome had gone.

He found confirmation at the Astana team bus. “I sprinted up to the Astana team bus, leant my bike against it and started to climb the stairs on to it. As I did so, Froomey was coming down them.”

Back at the Sky bus, Rowe asked Froome what had happened. The response was blunt. “‘He won’t be fucking with me for a while.’”

According to Rowe, Froome had marched onto the Astana bus and physically confronted Nibali. “It turned out that he’d got on to the Astana bus and grabbed Nibali by the scruff of the neck,” he writes. Froome demanded Nibali point out how he had caused the crash, which was clearly not the case on replay footage.

“Nibali, meanwhile, went as white as a ghost and didn’t know what to say,” Rowe recalls. Froome made it clear the hostility wouldn’t be tolerated again, and the story underlines a side of Froome not often seen publicly. “Like I said, Froomey had some dog in him and that was one moment when it came out,” Rowe writes.

Rowe draws a line from that moment to the kind of authority Froome commanded in the peloton. “People talk about the likes of Bernard Hinault or Lance Armstrong being the peloton’s patron... Froomey had that about him as well.”