Chris Froome was happy for others – team-mates and rivals – to claim the glory this time, after the three-times Tour de France champion ended his Australian trip with no personal wins, finishing sixth overall on Sunday in the Herald Sun Tour, behind winner Damien Howson.

A year ago, Froome changed his race program and started the season in Australia – the first time he had done so since becoming a Tour de France champion. He capped the brief visit with a dominating performance at Arthurs Seat to claim the Herald Sun Tour title.

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This year, Froome also competed at the inaugural Race Melbourne and then the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Race. He featured prominently throughout, but others at Team Sky had the success this time.

Danny van Poppel won the Herald Sun Tour prologue, while Luke Rowe took out stage two and Ian Stannard won Sunday’s last stage at Kinglake. Froome surged near the end on Sunday, but was unable to threaten Australian Howson and his title defence ended with sixth overall.

“It’s been a really solid block, a great week of racing for us and it’s been really aggressive every day,” Froome said. “We’ve tried to have someone in the break or really tried to take the race on and that’s exactly what we wanted from this race.

“Damien Howson – really strong and he rode a great stage on Falls Creek. He’s defended the jersey really well so, yeah, ‘chapeau’.”

Froome added Howson’s Orica-Scott team were simply too strong. “We’re here to race, of course we’re trying to win as well,” he said. “We hit them with everything we had today and they defended it really well.”

Froome was delighted for Stannard, one of his key lieutenants. Stannard is built like an AFL midfielder, rather than a climber, but he managed to attack at the end of the hilly Kinglake stage.

He nearly celebrated too early, but had enough of a gap to win. “He’s an absolute beast of a rider, that’s the thing about Ian – he’s so versatile, 85kg or something, but still wins on top of a climb, scary,” Froome said.