by Our Sports Desk

CHRIS FROOME sent an ominous message yesterday to the rivals bidding to snatch the Tour de France leader’s yellow jersey off him, saying: “I’m getting stronger.”

The Team Sky leader has a 12-second advantage over Tejay van Garderen (BMC Racing) after nine stages of the Tour, with his other major contenders trailing by at least one minute.

Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) is one minute three seconds back, Nairo Quintana (Movistar) 1m 59s adrift and defending champion Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) 2m 22s behind.

Asked about his position during yesterday’s first rest day in Pau and ahead of today’s first Pyrenees stage, the 167km route from Tarbes to La Pierre-Saint-Martin, Froome compared himself favourably to his condition in 2013, when he won the 100th Tour.

“I think I’m in quite a different position than I was two years ago,” said Froome, who crashed out in 2014.

“I came into the race extremely ready two years ago. I’d won pretty much every race building up to the Tour and I did feel as if once I got past the halfway mark in the 2013 Tour that I was almost just hanging on to the finish.

“This year I feel as if I’ve come in much fresher, a lot more mentally prepared and I feel as if I’m getting stronger in this year’s race.

“Now it’s up to other teams to put the pressure on us. This is the heart of the race now. This is where all the action’s going to be happening, we’re going to see who has done their homework, who has got what in the mountains.

“This is where the real race in yellow truly starts.”

The route from the start in Utrecht, through Holland, Belgium and northern France, was expected to challenge Froome, but he has thrived and is relishing the high mountain stages where the maillot jaune is won.

Froome, the second Briton to win the Tour after Bradley Wiggins in 2012, said: “Coming into this race there was a lot of last year still in the back of my mind. This first week was really one of the biggest concerns.

“The big thing was not to actually lose any of the time to any of the contenders.

“It is the first mountain-top finish. Everyone’s going to be looking at this as a gauge as to how things are going to go the next two weeks.

“It’s a very important stage, but I’m very grateful that I’m in this position now, that I’m not trying to make up time on someone else.”