@red_flanders
Well a baseline would be assuming Froome spoke true when he said he did a Vo2Max test in 2007 scoring somewhere between 80 and 85 while being 4 kilos heavier than today. So we could say, the talent is there, but held back by inexperience, illness and respective side effects, as well as the fact that it's probably hard to compare the quality of his training as teenager with that of most european riders, so his talent being turned into results might take a while longer.
I don't want to discuss the quality of Team Sky's training and preparation (no doping reference intended), but I think it's not a stretch to imagine that it was the best he had so far in his career. Add the radical weight loss to it , and 2 rounds of pzq treatment (his Tour of Poland, or his preparation for it maybe hampered by side-effects) and at the Vuelta 2011 things fell into place he could finally reap what he had sown. You'll laugh at this, I know, and I understand that

but this, or somewhere along those lines, is how I believe it could have happened.
Now would you be so kind and answer my question too?