Will not give rivals any seconds for free: Froome

Le Puy-en-Velay (France), July 18 (IANS) British rider Chris Froome has said that he will not gift any seconds to his rivals in the Tour de France.

After 15 stages, Froome (Sky) is the 2017 Tour de France overall race leader, as he recorded 64 hours and 40.21 minutes, 18 seconds ahead of Team Astana's Italian rider Fabio Aru, reports Efe news agency.

"I'm certainly not going to give any seconds away for free, but as I had a bad day in the Pyrenees, I could have a bad day in the Alps. I'm feeling better and better as the race goes on," Froome said on Monday, the second rest day of the 2017 Tour.

"Even with yesterday's stage, I felt pretty good, and hopefully, that's a sign of timing things well and coming into the Tour really fresh. I hope that this third week I'll be at my best," the defending champion added.

The 32-year-old Froome said that he was expecting from day one that this year's Tour would be the biggest challenge of his career and the toughest fight.

"Each rival presents a different threat. If you look at Fabio Aru, he won the first mountain top finish on Planche des Belles Filles. He perhaps didn't have the best day a couple of days ago, but he's been strong in the third week before, and we'll have to see how he goes," he continued.

"Romain Bardet has always been strong in the last week, and he has the team to back him up. So, of course, as we saw yesterday, he put me under a lot of pressure yesterday and we really had to use the whole team to keep control of the situation," the Nairobi-born Froome said.