Pressure on Wada to explain Froome case
Team Sky ‘happy’ for doping body to reveal sensational decision to clear rider of doping
Team Sky have effectively challenged the World Antidoping Agency and cycling’s world governing body, the UCI, to publish the full details of Chris Froome’s salbutamol case, as the clamour grows to understand exactly how and why the case was closed just days before the start of this year’s Tour de France.
The British team added that they would be “happy” for those details to be released, with the uncertainty only serving to inflame tensions ahead of the sport’s biggest race.
Froome, 33, was sensationally cleared of any wrongdoing on Monday when the UCI dropped a nine-month investigation into an adverse analytical finding for asthma drug salbutamol. The UCI said it was acting on advice from Wada, which it noted had “unparalleled access to information and authorship of the salbutamol regime”.
Wada duly released a statement later on Monday confirming that it was not going to appeal the UCI’S decision, But it gave little detail as to how Froome’s legal team had managed to win the case.
Those who were convinced that Froome has unfairly escaped sanction talk about his victory as “bought innocence”. However, those who felt that Froome’s reputation was being unfairly tarnished said Wada’s controls were to blame and that should be made clear. And if the test is unreliable, other “false positives” may have been triggered in the past or could be again in the future.
In an interview on Monday, Froome told Sky Sports News that the details of the case would be
‘The team won’t be putting out more details. It is up to UCI and Wada’
“fully communicated in the next few days”. “It is a very complicated process,” he said. “It has taken nine months of dealing with the UCI. It’s very technical data. All of that will be fully communicated in the media in the next few days.”
A Team Sky spokesperson later clarified, however, that Froome was mistaken. “The team won’t be putting out more information as it’s a UCI/WADA process and it’s for them to decide what to put out. We don’t have access to their data and scientific studies,” a spokesperson told Cyclingnews. “We would be happy with them doing so but it is for them to decide.”
Wada did not return requests for comment yesterday. But the facts of the case, at least those in the public domain, are as follows: Froome has said he was taking two puffs a day up until the last week of the Vuelta, when he fell ill. Wada’s maximum permitted dosage is 1,600 mcg every 24 hours, not to exceed 800 mcg per 12 hours. That equates to 16 puffs in 24 hours. So Froome should still have been well within the limits.
Froome returned a urine sample containing 2,000ng/ml of salbutamol after stage 18 of the 2017 Vuelta a Espana. That figure is way above the Wada threshold of 1000ng/ml and higher than the “decision limit” of 1200ng/ml that is needed to trigger an AAF.
When adjusted for specific gravity, taking urine concentration and dehydration into account,
Froome’s reading is understood to have been corrected down to 1429ng/ml. That is still 20 per cent above the decision limit.
Somehow Froome’s legal team appear to have been able to prove that there are sufficient variables in the excretion of salbutamol as to make the test unreliable.
Wada said on Monday that it was well aware of those variables, which was why it allowed for athletes to show, typically via a controlled pharmacokinetic study (CPKS), how they managed to achieve their reading while staying within the prescribed dosage.
In Froome’s case, however, they said a CPKS was not practicable as it would have been impossible to recreate the conditions.