Bright Chris Froome (Israel Startup Nation) insisted that age and slow recovery from an accident are not obstacles as he competes in his fifth Tour de France with his new team this summer, and he said that the victory of Tadei Pogachar, the second youngest Tour champion in history, " It gives hope to a small team," he said.

If the 35-year-old Froome wins the Tour de France this summer, he will become the second oldest rider in history to win the race since Belgium's Firmin Lambot won in 1922 at age 36.

However, judging from the Israeli Startup Nation team's first press conference on Monday, the possibility of becoming Lambot's runner-up nearly a century later is not a cycling statistic that Froome feels is particularly relevant to his case.

"Age is a state of mind. I started cycling a little late, so I feel relatively young in cycling years," said Froome. [While other team leaders, management, and owners such as Dan Martin, Michael Woods, and Sepp Vanmarcke attended the same press conference from their ongoing training camp in Girona, Spain, Froome, speaking from his current winter base in California, continued to compete into his late 30s He insisted that he could continue to compete into his late thirties.

"As nutrition and sports have evolved over the years, it is certainly possible for athletes to get slower and slower.

"You look at athletes in their 40s like Alejandro Valverde, who is still competing in the Grand Tours and against the best in the world.

Valverde, who turns 41 in April, first competed in a Grand Tour in 2002 and finished third overall in the Vuelta a España in 2003. Twenty years later, he finished second overall and won a stage at the 2019 Spanish Grand Tour.

Even though Froom last won the Tour four years ago, his record-setting fifth victory in the race was far from his own, and he claimed that quitting the race after his crash would have been an easier path, but that he was not ready for it.

"That might have been the easier option, but it was not the way I wanted to end my cycling career. Having won four Tour de France titles, I don't think it's over yet.

"I want to get to fifth place and continue racing until I'm ready to retire on my own terms, with the Grand Tour as my goal. Being out of the race with a crash was not a good thing for me. So once I knew that a full recovery was possible and that there was nothing physically holding me back, it was a simple decision for me."

Froom said he is optimistic about his chances of being able to compete in the July race, although he hopes his recovery from the crash will be quicker. He also argued that Pogachar's victory was a reminder that the big, experienced teams of the World Tour do not always dominate the Tour, and that it is not only theoretically possible, but actually possible, for a less successful team in the Grand Tour field to turn things around.

"As for how realistic it is to aim for the Tour de France this year, my first goal is to get back to 100% level again. [But it was only after I got back into racing that I realized exactly where I was and realized the weaknesses I still had and the things I still needed to work on."

Froome said that with extensive training at the Red Bull High Performance Center in California three or four times a week, he can reach his previous level again in 2021.

"Hopefully, that was a big learning experience for me, and it drove my decision to come here.

On the Tour itself and how the emerging Israeli nation can deal with larger or more experienced teams, Froome said: "Of course, there are some very strong teams that dominate the front of the peloton, as we saw last season. If you look at Pogachar's team at the Tour de France last year, his team didn't have that kind of run.

"His race was fantastic and to see a scenario like that gives a lot of hope to smaller teams.

As for what specific efforts Froom made during his recovery period to get back to his best condition, he said: "Right after the Vuelta last year, I unscrewed my leg a bit. During the race in Spain, I unscrewed a couple of screws right above my knee.

"So I'm glad I got those out. Since then I've been working on my quads mostly. In cycling terms, my quads were taking the most damage. I feel like I'm making a lot of progress toward where I should be."

While Froome's recovery and team changes dominate the short-term news cycle, his options regarding a British winner and a fifth Tour feature strongly further down the road. But Froome said he is fully on board with the team's goal of expanding and improving the team.

"It's a long-term commitment on my part, and being with the team is something I'm committed to until the end of my career and beyond. So I'm committed to this team. I want to do everything I can to make the team as good as it can be."

Froom did not yet want to discuss what the race program would look like, given the uncertainty that currently dominates the calendar. But his main goal for 2021 is clear, and judging from Monday, the Briton is clearly determined to give 100% to get there, regardless of the obstacles.