Chris Froome, a British cyclist who has won the Tour de France four times, will not be part of the Israel-Premier Tech team of eight riders for the race next month.

Froome, who is 38 and hasn’t won a race since 2018, had a lot of technical problems before the Tour.

“Physically, I was ready, but I couldn’t show my full skills because of problems with my equipment,” Froome told GCN.

He dropped out of the race with Covid after stage 17 last year.

Froome added that he would not be participating in the 2023 Tour de France. He said, “I respect the team’s decision and will take some time before refocusing on goals later in the season and coming back in 2024.”

In 2021, he joined Israel-Premier Tech with the goal of getting back to full health after a crash in 2019 left him with many injuries.

But he hasn’t been able to get back to the form he had at Team Sky. This season, he has also had to change bikes more than he would have liked.

In 10 years with Team Sky, he won seven Grand Tours, including the Tour de France in 2013, 2015, 2016, and 2017, the Giro d’Italia in 2018, and the Vuelta a Espaa in 2011 and 2017.

The general manager of Israel-Premier Tech, Kjell Carlstrom, said, “It was hard to choose our Tour de France team this year, but we think we chose the eight riders who are best suited to meet our performance goals.”

“The fact that we had a hard time choosing from our long list of riders shows how strong and deep our group is. Unfortunately, we couldn’t choose everyone.”

Guillaume Boivin, Simon Clarke, Hugo Houle, Krists Neilands, Nick Schultz, Corbin Strong, Dylan Teuns and Michael Woods will represent Israel-Premier Tech.

On July 1, the Tour de France starts in Bilbao.