Tour De France 2013: Chris Froome Must Get More Help from Team Sky

While 2013 Tour de France favorite Chris Froome has been performing well, the lack of support from his teammates at Team Sky is only hurting his chances of walking away from the event with the yellow jersey.

Besides Froome—the British cycling star is currently first in the general classification with a time of 41:52:43, per The Telegraph—the rest of Team Sky is 34th or worse (teammate Richie Porte is the second-best rider on the board).

Team Sky is 12th overall out of 22 teams.

Most groups in cycling would be happy with the overall leader in the classification on their team, but Team Sky is coming off a 2012 race that saw Bradley Wiggins win and Froome help push him to that victory with a second-place finish.

Without Wiggins in the race, Froome will need his teammates to step up.

Tour veteran and Team Sky cyclist Geraint Thomas told Ian Chadband of The Guardian about his team’s view on the race and how they will still be contenders at the end:

"

The other teams see us as vulnerable and will try to take the race to us again. I’m up for it, looking forward to it. We see it as a fight now. It’s like the track racing against the Aussies who we’ve always had a rivalry with. Coming up to London, we’d lost to them but we turned it around when it mattered. I’m confident we can do the same.

"

While these words could ring hollow for some teams in these pressing situations, this is far from the truth for these cyclists, as Thomas is currently dealing with a broken pelvis, per VeloNews.

The inspiration for Thomas’ teammates as he continues to ride hard through the pain should have every one of the Team Sky cyclists digging deep and finding another gear to help put Froome into the lead for good.

The overall team win may be too far out of reach right now, but the fact that Froome has taken it upon himself to lead the entire general classification proves that he has exactly what it takes to win.

All that’s left is getting Froome surrounded by Team Sky riders and leading him to a convincing overall victory.

The yellow jersey is within reach, but the 2012 second-place finisher needs a little help from his friends to pull the victory off.

Follow @Donald_Wood