Four-time Tour de France champion Chris Froome has retired from cycling after a 19-year career in the professional peloton.Born in Kenya, the 41-year-old also won the 2018 Giro d’Italia and two editions of the Vuelta a España to become the most decorated male stage race rider in British cycling history.Froome confirmed his retirement fewer than 48 hours before the Tour de France begins in Barcelona on Saturday, having not raced since suffering serious chest injuries in a crash last September.“Unfortunately, there was that fall last summer,” Froome said at a Skoda brand ambassador event on Thursday. “That wasn’t the way I wanted it to end. But even then, I knew it was over.”Asked whether his career was over, Froome confirmed: “Yes.”Originally breaking through in the nascent days of Team Sky at the beginning of the 2010s, Froome developed into their spearhead during that decade. He was arguably stronger than his team leader Bradley Wiggins during the 2012 Tour de France, which created tension inside the team as Wiggins became the first British rider to win the Tour.
The following year, Froome returned to the race as Team Sky’s leader and began his run of success in cycling’s biggest event, winning the yellow jersey in 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017.Froome celebrates victory at the 2015 Tour de France with his Team Sky team-mates (Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)Froome’s success was sometimes reduced to Sky’s dominance, not always popular with cycling fans due to its tactics of shutting the race down with displays of team strength, though the Brit’s supreme endurance and underrated time-trialling ability still rendered him the best general classification (GC) rider of his generation.Victory at the 2018 Giro, secured with an 80km solo attack over the Colle delle Finestre, was perhaps the greatest demonstration of his brilliance. That, though, was the last time Froome won a race.His career waned after leaving Team Sky for Israel Start-Up Nation (later Israel Premier-Tech) in 2021 — hastened by a life-threatening crash during preparation for the Critérium du Dauphiné two years earlier — having not podiumed at a Grand Tour since the 2018 Tour, won by his team-mate Geraint Thomas.Froome’s time with Israel Premier-Tech was unsuccessful, with his best result a third place on a mountain stage at the 2022 Tour de France. He failed to complete that edition and an anonymous 113th-placed finish at the 2022 Vuelta a España was his last appearance at one of cycling’s Grand Tours.He last raced at the 2025 Tour of Poland, finishing 68th.Jul 2, 2026Connections: Sports EditionSpot the pattern. Connect the termsFind the hidden link between sports terms
