“If the ambulance hadn’t got there so quickly, I don’t think I’d be here today” - Chris Froome opens up on near-death crash that ended cycling career

Chris Froome’s professional career ended without a farewell race, a final Grand Tour or even an immediate retirement announcement. Almost a year after the training crash that ultimately brought his time in the peloton to a close, the four-time Tour de France winner has now revealed just how little any of that mattered in the immediate aftermath.

Froome suffered life-threatening injuries after crashing while training in southern France in August 2025, only weeks after completing what proved to be the final race of his career at the Tour de Pologne. Early reports confirmed multiple broken ribs, a collapsed lung, a fractured vertebra and a rupture to the pericardium surrounding his heart.

The reality, Froome has now explained, was more severe still.

“I almost died,” the 41-year-old told Cycling News. “My pericardium was open, my heart was exposed. I broke all my ribs, [they] imploded into my chest cavity.”

Froome had already survived one career-changing accident when a high-speed reconnaissance crash at the 2019 Criterium du Dauphine left him with a fractured femur, elbow and ribs among a lengthy list of injuries.

Six years later, the consequences of his 2025 accident went beyond whether he would ever race professionally again.

“So I've got metal plates on each of my ribs to hold the rib cage open again, because the whole rib cage like basically collapsed, and the ribs did a lot of damage to the right lung, and one of the ribs tore open the pericardium,” Froome explained. “So I was literally bleeding out. The ambulance got there within, I think seven, eight minutes of my crash, if they hadn't got there so quickly, I don't think I'd be here today. So I'm extremely, extremely lucky.”

The initial surgery was not the end of Froome’s medical problems. Although he managed a brief return to the bike in December, an infection subsequently developed around some of the metal plates used to reconstruct his rib cage.

“I did get on the bike literally just for a spin, I think it was in December sometime, but I had an infection around some of the metal plates that they put on my ribs, and I had to go back into surgery again, and more tubes into my lungs,” he revealed.

Froome says it was only around the end of January and into February that he was able to begin riding again with any regularity. Even then, there was no training programme aimed at another comeback. The bike had become something altogether different. “Slowly, just socially now, just getting out, just to clear the head and get out with friends and have a good time on the bike.”

By the time Froome crashed, the end of his professional career had already been approaching. The five-year contract he signed with Israel-Premier Tech ahead of the 2021 season was due to expire, and he has since explained that he had always expected it to be his final deal.

What he did not get was the opportunity to close that chapter on his own terms. His last appearance in the professional peloton came at the 2025 Tour de Pologne, where he finished 68th overall before contesting the final 12.5-kilometre time trial in Wieliczka on August 10. Weeks later, the crash removed any realistic prospect of another start.

Despite that, no formal retirement announcement followed. Froome remained publicly uncommitted about his status for months before eventually confirming during the 2026 Tour de France that he would not race professionally again.

For Froome, however, there was considerably less uncertainty than appeared from the outside. “I almost killed myself on the bike, it was months' hospital time and medical issues, and having to take medication to try and get myself back to health again,” he said. “It was really just trying to sort myself out, to be able to live a normal life again, I almost took it as a given that everyone knew I'd stopped."

“I was literally in hospital, still, through January. I crashed in August. I was in no state to be making announcements or doing PR," he added. “I told people when I signed my contract, I said 'this will be my last contract', so I thought it was very clear to people, even though I crashed before I was able to do an official retirement announcement.”

It brought an abrupt ending to one of the defining Grand Tour careers of his generation. Froome won the Tour de France four times between 2013 and 2017, added two Vuelta a Espana titles and completed his set of all three Grand Tours with victory at the 2018 Giro d'Italia.

There was ultimately no final victory lap. After surviving an accident he now says came within minutes of costing him his life, simply getting back to normal life became far more important than finding another finish line.