(Reuters) – Four-times winner Chris Froome has been left out of Israel-Premier Tech’s (IPT) squad for this year’s Tour de France, the team confirmed on Friday.
The 38-year-old Froome said in a recent interview that competing at this year’s Tour was his “ultimate goal” after his hopes at last year’s race were derailed by a positive COVID-19 test.
IPT named Guillaume Boivin, Simon Clarke, Hugo Houle, Krists Neilands, Nick Schultz, Corbin Strong, Dylan Teuns and Michael Woods (CAN) in their eight-strong squad for the race, which starts on July 1 in Bilbao.
“It was a tough decision to select our Tour de France team this year but we feel we selected eight riders best suited to fulfilling our performance objectives,” said IPT General Manager Kjell Carlstrom.
“The fact that we had a difficult decision to make when looking at our long list shows the strength and depth of our rider group, and unfortunately we could not select everyone.”
(Reporting by Simon Jennings in Bengaluru; Editing by Toby Davis)
