Chris Froome vs Geraint Thomas: Team Sky friendship set to be tested by individual Tour de France ambition

Judging by the reaction on the roads and rostrums of this Tour de France, there are a lot of people here who had wanted the race to be about anything but Team Sky. They had hoped Chris Froome wouldn’t compete, or that Romain Bardet would finally come of age, or that a Team Sky defector like Richie Porte or Mikel Landa would slay them with poetic justice. Now, as the race enters its final week with almost every other team now either beaten up or beaten off, those same -people hold conflicted feelings for Team Sky’s man in the yellow jersey.

For many detractors, Geraint Thomas is just another rider falling off Team Sky’s infuriating production line, all woven in the same fabric, but there are also many willing him to beat Froome simply because he might be the only man who can. He is a more popular and charismatic figure than his four-time Tour winning team-mate, with less baggage too, and the potential to breathe a little fresh life into the Tour.

In a sweltering media tent in Carcassonne on Monday, the inevitable theme was his relationship with Froome and the potential strain it is about to bear. “We’re good mates,” insisted Thomas as the pair sat side by side. “We’ve ridden in the same team for a number of years now. We’ve generally lived in the same areas as well so we’ve always trained together and we just get on,” he said, before adding with a wry smile: “For now, anyway.”

The questions kept coming. Would you be willing to sacrifice a historic fifth Tour for your team-mate’s success? “Yep,” replied Froome sharply. Do you expect the man sitting next to you to come to your aid when things get tough in the Pyrenees? “No,” Froome responded. Thomas was asked the same question, and stalled for a moment. “No. No, no,” he finally said. “It’s all about winning this race and as long as one of us wins, that’s the main thing.”

This was the company line repeated by both riders: we are here to win for Team Sky and that’s all that matters. Yet the dynamic has undoubtedly shifted in the past few days. The line in the opening week was that Froome was the leader, that Thomas was just happy to be wearing yellow, that he had never proved himself over three weeks, and Froome had, and that was that.

But as the days tick by, that history is slowly being defied. Thomas looked every inch the grand tour champion when he threw his head back and clenched his fists on top of Alpe d’Huez, Froome rolling in wearily in the background. Winning successive Alpine stages is not the remit of a domestique. It has not been a bloody coup but a gradual undermining of Froome’s leadership, Thomas not destroying his rivals but gently chipping away, 10 seconds here, five seconds there, a few bonus seconds collected en route.

Sitting there as the world’s media swarmed around them, microphones covering the tiny desk, cameras poised and questions hurled from all directions, it was tempting to conclude that the external barrage directed at Team Sky has brought them together far more closely than their competing ambitions have divided them.

And it was also difficult to consider Thomas’s status as anything less than an equal footing with Froome. They have five riders to shield and protect them in the coming days but there is only so much their team-mates can do: this will be bareknuckle brawl on the mountainside and the strongest, smartest rider will win. Thomas predicted “war” in the Pyrenees, and the different colours they will wear illustrate that, whatever the official line, Thomas and Froome will be on opposite sides.