St. Andrew's School, a publicly funded school in Bloemfontein and St John's College, a boarding independent school in Johannesburg. Froome attended St John's alongside South African-born Scott Spedding, who went on to a professional rugby union career including playing internationally for France. Whilst in South Africa he was the school's cycling captain and kept in contact with Kinjah. He then studied economics for two years at the University of Johannesburg. In South Africa Froome started to participate in road cycling. On one of his school holidays, his home club gifted him with a second-hand yellow jersey. Being unaware of the Tour de France, he failed to see the significance. It was not until he was 22 that he turned professional. Froome started road racing in South Africa, specialising as a climber. Froome competed for Kenya in the road time trial and the road race at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, where he finished 17th and 25th respectively, catching the attention of future Team Sky principal Dave Brailsford: "The performance he did, on the equipment he was on, that takes some doing ... We always thought he was a bit of a diamond in the rough, who had a huge potential." While representing Kenya at the 2006 Road World Championships in the under-23 category in Salzburg, Austria, Froome crashed into an official just after the start of the time trial, causing both men to fall; although neither was injured, he finished in 36th place. Froome's appearance at the Worlds came about after he impersonated Kenyan cycling federation president Julius Mwangi by using Mwangi's email account to enter himself into the Championships, in order to add some European racing experience to his CV and boost his chances of obtaining a contract with a professional team. Professional career 2007–2010: Early years Froome turned professional in 2007, aged 22, with the South African team, Konica Minolta, withdrawing from university two years into his degree in economics. He competed from April to September in the U23 Nations Cup for the Union Cycliste Internationale's World Cycling Centre (WCC) team based in Aigle, Switzerland. In May he rode his first stage race, the Giro delle Regioni, winning stage five, riding for WCC. In late-May he won stage six of the Tour of Japan, attacking from a breakaway in the fourteen-lap circuit in Shuzenji. In June he competed at the "B" world championships in Cape Town, placing