Chris Froome (Team Sky) (Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
With less than one week to go before the start of the Giro d'Italia, Team Sky have released a video highlighting the preparations done by Chris Froome ahead of his historic Grand Tour attempt.
Froome heads to the small Italian town of Ovaro to preview the Monte Zoncolan, finding that the climbs en route to the final climb are also painfully steep.
The Briton is heading to Israel this week to start his bid to be one of the three riders in history who have held all three Grand Tour titles simultaneously. Only Bernard Hinault and Eddy Merckx have won all three in a row when the Vuelta a España was in April.
Froome reveals that he had his doubts when the team hatched the plan after he won last year's Tour de France and Vuelta a España.
"Initially when the team asked me about the Giro, my reaction was no. I really wanted to focus on doing a fifth Tour de France. In my mind, the goal all along was to try and get to that point," Froome says.
"There's an element of risk involved in targeting the Giro-Tour, but I think I'd regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't give it a go.
"To go from winning the Tour and then the Vuelta last year, and if we did the Giro this year all within 12 months it would be an unbelievable feat."
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It could also be a very short-lived honour for Froome. Should he win the Giro d'Italia with his salbutamol case not yet resolved, he could be stripped of his Vuelta title and even the Giro if found to have violated the anti-doping rules.
