Chris Froome is the best part of the Tour de France, just like no one expected

The shot of Chris Froome running up Mont Ventoux — all wobbly because 1) he’s running in cleats on concrete, and 2) he was in the process of climbing a damn mountain — is already iconic. It’s destined to be played every time the Tour de France takes on Mont Ventoux. It’ll be recalled as “that time when ...” like that time when Lance Armstrong rode through a field, a similar moment that Stage 12’s weirdness has already surpassed in hilarity, consequence and drama.

But in the postscript to the farce and confusion, a perhaps even more important moment was largely forgotten. With 33 kilometers to go, Simon Gerrans of Orica-BikeExchange slipped on an innocuous bend, falling badly onto his back and taking out three of Froome’s Sky teammates in the process. Froome waved his hands and stopped his bike next to his teammates. He forced the peloton to make a decision: Wait for the yellow jersey or ride on.

It waited, even though it may have had every right to leave Froome behind. A peloton will often wait for the yellow jersey — see: Lance once again — but the yellow jersey didn’t go down, his teammates did, and when racing is “on” as it was at that point in the stage, even the race leader isn’t necessarily due deference. Froome commanded that deference, got his teammates back and returned to leading the peloton.

Froome has been awe inspiring during this year’s Tour de France in a literal sense. He has twice left his rivals lost for answers, watching and wondering, leaving Nairo Quintana to take his water break at the top of the Col de Peyresourde and, two days ago, attacking on a nervy flat stage as a comparative stork alongside one of the world’s muscle-iest riders.

Froome looked out of place at that finish line, though that assumes anyone knows what his place is any more. He has been accused of being a robotic rider in the past. Before the Tour began, I wrote that he rides like a mathematical model. I am wrong and dumb. Whatever seemed to help him win his first two Tours won’t be what helps him win this year. Froome’s instincts have been his biggest advantage, not his team and not long-game caution. He is winning especially because no one believed he could forgo a plan.

Froome punked everyone, basically, and now it seems everyone who thought they had a plan is scrambling — Quintana, mainly. The Colombian clearly marked Mont Ventoux as a day to attack, because he actually tried after holding back any response to Froome for days. Quintana accelerated up the mountain and for a few seconds he delivered on the excitement that his talent promised before he was summarily hauled in by Froome and two of his teammates. One of them, Wout Poels, had gone down in the Gerrans crash and might not have been so far up Mont Ventoux if Froome hadn’t slowed down the peloton.

The Tour de France is a mind bender. It demands so much planning because it really is difficult to portion out energy across 3,519 kilometers and 23 days, but then it gleefully trashes those plans. Consider the confluence of events that made Thursday’s ending possible: High winds led race organizers to lop off the last six kilometers of Mont Ventoux, which pushed fans further down the mountain to the new finish line. Barriers hadn’t been set up there, giving the fan or fans who stopped the motorbike in front of Richie Porte access to the road. The moto hit the brakes, and Bauke Mollema ended up in a heap on top of Froome and Porte. Mollema took off to finish the race.

In the meantime, Froome did his best imitation of a Sunday jogger before being handed a comically undersized bike and trying to ride that for a while. It didn’t technically matter that Froome was passed by a lot of riders — he and Porte were given Mollema’s time in the end — but the moment still felt important and wonderful and encapsulating on its own.

It was a bit of unadulterated soul in a race that crushes it by design, putting riders so deep into their own heads that they hesitate and crumble somewhere on, like, kilometer 178 of a midway stage. Just one instance of failure can nullify every one of a million tiny pedal-stroke successes, and all because a rider thought too much.

Pure instinct is an awesome thing to see. It’s not necessarily a common sight in cycling, much less so in this era of ration tactics. In an adrenaline daze, Froome distilled the point of this giant, stupid, tape-stitched enterprise: Going towards the finish line as fast as possible. And in the grand scheme of this year’s Tour, no one has understood that better than him.

It isn’t fair that the Tour will benefit from this. Its own poor organization and planning created a dangerous situation that happened to begat something exceptional. The Tour will use this to sell itself until the end of time. On the other hand, it’s hard to blame the Tour for reveling in something worth reveling in. It’s lucky to have Chris Froome — the talented, gut-trusting, road-shark, fun Chris Froome who no one expected. We all are.