‘I’m proud to be in Team Sky’
CHRIS FROOME
CHRIS FROOME has delivered a ringing statement of support for Team Sky and insists he sticks by his squad despite the ongoing credibility crisis.
On Monday a bombshell Parliamentary report claimed Sky had crossed “an ethical line” by using drugs allowed under anti-doping rules to enhance performance rather than simply for medical need.
But Froome, one of a handful of riders to remain with Sky since its inception in 2010, says he has witnessed no wrongdoing in the squad.
“I can only speak from my own experiences in the team. I’ve been there for eight years, since day one. I certainly have a very different picture to what’s been painted in the headlines,” Froome said yesterday. “I’ve never seen anything like that, it’s not my experience within the team.”
Froome was notably slow in providing an endorsement for Sir Dave Brailsford 14 months ago, despite being repeatedly invited to back his beleaguered team boss.
Froome eventually did so, but this time he has been much quicker, and singled out Brailsford as a positive force despite increasingly strident calls for his resignation. “I’m proud to be part of the team,” he said. “I wouldn’t have stayed so long, I wouldn’t still be in the team, if I didn’t believe in the team and the people around me. Dave has brought all those people together and we’ve got a fantastic group.”
At the press conference to promote today’s start of the Tirreno-Adriatico stage race in Italy, Froome was asked repeatedly if Brailsford should resign. At first he did not seem to hear the question, but eventually said: “No. Like I said, I’m really proud to be part of this team.”
Froome also strongly denied a report that there had been a small group of Sky riders taking corticosteroids in the build-up to the 2012 Tour de France – which was won by his team-mate Sir Bradley Wiggins – as part of a weightloss programme. Sky have already dismissed the allegation.
“That’s absolute rubbish. I’ve seen that accusation, but that’s total rubbish,” insisted Froome, who found himself seated next to world time-trial champion Tom Dumoulin, one of Wiggins’ sternest critics, at yesterday’s event.
Two years ago Dumoulin slammed Wiggins’s reported use of a Therapeutic Use Exemption to take triamcinolone before targeting the most important Grand Tours in his career, saying simply: “It stinks.” The Dutchman has also expressed disquiet about the length of time it is taking Froome and his team to resolve the issue of the adverse analytical finding for salbutamol, an anti-asthma product, during his Vuelta a Espana victory last summer.
David Lappartient, president of the world governing body UCI, has said Froome should not be racing, while Christian Prudhomme, the director of the Tour de France, is concerned he could bid for a fifth Yellow Jersey in July with the case still not sorted. “This is crazy,” he said. “What we want is an answer.”
Froome, however, shrugged off the pressure and said: “That’s part of something I’ve been dealing with over my whole career. I have come up against adversity and I’ve learned how to compartmentalise things.
“There’s a process for me to follow and a process for me to demonstrate that I’ve not done anything wrong, and that’s exactly what I plan to do.”
That accusation is total rubbish