The 33-year-old was ruled out of even competing in the grandest of cycling's three tours after suffering extensive injuries in a crash during the Criterium du Dauphine last month.

Geraint Thomas joked he would be happy with an 'uneventful' Tour de France as long as a Team Ineos rider is stood on the top step in Paris at the end of the month.

Chris Froome admitted he is 'relieved' to be back home and will be following the Tour de France from his bed following the horror crash that left him seriously injured.

MATT LAWTON ON THE COL DU TOURMALET: Owner of Ineos Jim Ratcliffe must have sat in the team car on Saturday afternoon and wondered if he had just bought a cycling team in decline.

Chris Froome's comeback from career-threatening injuries gathered pace in Paris as the four-time Tour de France winner targeted victory in next year's race.

Froome posted a picture on social media following the operation, restating his goals of getting back to full fitness in time for next summer's Tour de France and the Olympic road race in Japan.

Nine months after his career almost ended in a bone-splintering crash into a French garden wall, Froome's comeback to cycling gets going in the desert setting of the UAE Tour on Sunday.

The Tour has not been cancelled since 1946 when France was recovering from the War but has now been cancelled is in its 107th year after France's lockdown extension.

JANE FRYER: Allen McCloud, 59, is the businessman behind the swingers club at the Croydon Hall Hotel, in the sleepy village of Rodhuish, population 293, near Minehead in Somerset.

On Wednesday, Boris was spotted in a Tesco Express in Islington, close to his former marital home. Rucksack on back, crumpled as ever, he was in a hurry and, according to a witness.

Retired engineer Richard Keedwell, 71, has spent nearly three years, attended seven court hearings and spent £30,000 of his sons' inheritance disputing a £100 speeding fine.

Roald was plagued by the feeling he had let his 'favourite child' down after Olivia contracted measles encephalitis, writes JANE FRYER. The first vaccine was licensed the following year in the U.S.

JANE FRYER: Over the past six decades his art has embraced everything from German mythology to astronomy; maths to comparative religion; politics to war. And all the while, become bigger.

The Rev Chris is the hottest thing in the Church of England right now. Not just in terms of his fame - he has more than 117,000 Instagram followers and is a massive hit on YouTube channels.

JANE FRYER: Bob Weighton, of Alton, Hampshire neither drinks nor smokes. 'I tried one of my brother's cigarettes when I was 12, was sick and I've never smoked since,' he says.

JANE FRYER visited Emily Duncan, 42, and her husband, Henry, who live in Dumfries and Galloway. They own a flock of Valais Blacknose sheep, which have hairy black faces and comically fluffy coats.

JANE FRYER: Certainly it will be beautiful and awesome and, for those with binoculars and telescopes, there will be an awful lot to see.

JANE FRYER: By the time he was 23, Ronan O'Rahilly had fled his native Ireland for London, was running a successful club in Soho, The Scene and set up a record label.

Prince Albert's cruel notes to Queen Victoria shatter their mythic love story - he called her 'my child' and cut her down - saying 'I feel the dreadful waste of most precious time, and of energies' with her.

A.N. WILSON: Peter Phillips' tacky and absurd milk advertisement, reported in yesterday's Daily Mail, has provoked understandable laughter and contempt.

Theresa May's radical plans for tackling the crisis was a big mistake, but she was right to identify provision of social care in our ageing society as one of the greatest challenges facing the country.

There is no hiding from the truth. This was a dreadful night for the Conservatives, Brexit and a future for this country that had looked remarkably bright.

What on Earth do Tory Remoaners think they are playing at? Don't they realise that by courting Labour support they could sink their party – and hand the keys of No 10 to Jeremy Corbyn?

But though the perpetrator of this ghastly crime may have different coloured skin from the others, their motivation was the same – to sow hate and division in our tolerant society.

If Corbyn truly believed in democracy, he’d roundly condemn today’s ‘Day of Rage’, organised by the storm troops of the hard Left to bring London to a halt and help overthrow the Government.

Her Withdrawal Agreement Bill is seemingly dead in the water, and as events in Downing Street yesterday so brutally demonstrated, her support and authority have evaporated.

So this is it. We have arrived at the moment when Parliament can finally end this Brexit purgatory. Alternatively, they could continue to put petty politics before the national interest.

For the first time in 47 years, the country that gave the globe Magna Carta, parliamentary democracy, the industrial revolution and human rights, will once again be truly sovereign.

CHARLES SALE - SPORTS AGENDA: The FA leadership will have an unlikely say in the appointments of the new chief executive and chairman of the Premier League.

CHARLES SALE - SPORTS AGENDA: An FA council meeting on October 24 looks like being pivotal to the proposed £600million sale of Wembley to Fulham owner Shahid Khan.

CHARLES SALE - SPORTS AGENDA: The troubled Hundred format on which the England Cricket Board are placing so much importance is facing a critical fortnight.

CHARLES SALE - SPORTS AGENDA: One of the longest contracts in sport is complicating the FA’s plan to bring the England players’ commercial operation in-house.

CHARLES SALE - SPORTS AGENDA: The Premier League are set to bankroll the Professional Footballers Association for another three years despite concern over Gordon Taylor's control.

CHARLES SALE - THE SPORTS AGENDA: adidas invited all their English football clubs to their Munich headquarters last week to present future plans.

CHARLES SALE - SPORTS AGENDA IN PARIS: It has emerged on the eve of the Ryder Cup that European Tour chief executive Keith Pelley earned a salary of £2.78million last year.

CHARLES SALE - SPORTS AGENDA IN PARIS: It has not gone down well at the Trianon Palace Hotel, where both teams are staying, that the Americans have brought their own chef.

CHARLES SALE: Sky's continued coverage of the Ryder Cup for the next two tournaments is by far the most crucial aspect of their new four-year deal with the European Tour, agreed on the eve of the event.

CHARLES SALE - SPORTS AGENDA IN PARIS: Gary Lineker has infuriated the golf community by calling Justin Rose's popular caddie Mark Fulcher 'an absolute numpty'.

As yesterday’s special European Union summit made clear, this country’s divorce from Brussels is likely to be painful. It is a time when Britain needs a strong, clear-headed and resolute Prime Minister.

Britain’s National Health Service has plainly been carefully targeted by internet highwaymen looking for easy victims. They did not choose the NHS because it was impoverished.

Unforeseen events have utterly transformed the political weather. First came the Election result. Then came the abiding, endlessly painful tragedy of Grenfell Tower.

It is hard to view Boris Johnson's Brexit outburst as anything other than a hostile act, coming less than a week before Mrs May sets out her own Brexit vision in a speech in Florence.

MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s camp threatens to destroy the fragile peace so recently achieved by the Prime Minister.

Chief Constables are not hired to change the law. They are hired to enforce it. Mike Barton, the Durham Police chief, needs to be sharply reminded of this, THE MAIL ON SUNDAY says.

The Mail on Sunday urges MPs to end the chaos and indecision, recover their good sense, and support the Prime Minister. Loyalty has never been so important.

MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove, today goes public to say Seumas Milne - Jeremy Corbyn's closest courtier- stands 'no chance' of passing Whitehall checks.

MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: If Mr Farage insists on pursuing his impossible dream of a perfect Brexit, he will not get it.

MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Boris Johnson is said to have been unhappy about imposing his lockdown on the country, and that his naturally liberal instincts are troubled by it.

MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Our hearts go out to the frontline staff in the NHS who face dangers as great as any endured by soldiers in battle.

MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Leaks from inside Whitehall suggest that senior Ministers, in the absence of Boris Johnson, are reluctant to take any major decisions.