Tour right to be hard on Froome

Article 29 of the Amaury Sport Organisation’s rules made it very clear. ‘ASO expressly reserves the right to refuse the participation in — or disqualify from — the event, a team or one of its members whose presence is liable to damage the image or reputation of ASO or those of the event.’ As one of the competitions run by Amaury is the tour de France, they would have had chris Froome bang to rights. For article 29 transcends process, or right and wrong, or even fairness. it merely asks whether, by your very presence, you could harm the standing of the tour. And while Froome had an unresolved doping allegation over his head, he most certainly could. ASO were ready to cite, as precedent, Froome’s hugely controversial victory in the Giro d’italia, despite the lack of resolution on his appeal against an adverse analytical finding at last year’s Vuelta a espana. every achievement at the Giro had been viewed through the lens of the double dose of salbutamol found in his system after stage 18 at the Vuelta. Until that case concluded, of course Froome’s presence damaged the image of cycling events. in a sport that still struggles for credibility post-lance Armstrong, the best rider in the world needed to be clean beyond suspicion and, until yesterday, Froome was not. ‘We are confident that chris will be riding the tour as we know he has done nothing wrong,’ said team Sky. But it was never as simple as that. Until Froome was officially cleared by WADA and the Uci, what team Sky claimed to know, or their protestations of innocence, was irrelevant. His presence alone was ‘liable to damage the image or reputation . . . of the event’ and article 29 made the next course of action clear. if Froome had not been cleared, it should have been impossible for him to compete.