DOUBTS ARE RAISED OVER FROOME’S DOG TEST DEFENCE
SERIOUS doubts have been identified over the study which is understood to be a key part of Chris Froome’s defence against a potential doping ban.
Last month the legal team representing Froome submitted a new study that claims the test for asthma medication is ‘fundamentally flawed’.
But the UCI, cycling’s world governing body, say this study is itself flawed because the research is based on dogs not humans.
Team Sky rider Froome has been battling to save his reputation ever since he failed a drugs test for excessive levels of salbutamol en route to his victory in last year’s Vuelta a Espana.
The four-time Tour de France winner, who stormed to victory in last month’s Giro d’Italia to secure his sixth Grand Tour title, was found to have double the permitted limit of the asthma medication in his system.
But a paper from the Centre for Human Drug Research in Leiden, Holland was heralded last month as a breakthrough in Froome’s bid to clear his name. Published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, the research paper claimed as many as 15.4 per cent of tests could turn up a false positive, concluding that the presumption of an athlete’s guilt was ‘completely unacceptable’. Now, however, that study is the subject of intense scrutiny, with the UCI understood to be questioning whether it is simply being used as a delaying tactic to allow Froome to pursue a fifth Tour title next month. A key flaw appears to be the admission in the Leiden paper that some of their conclusions are based on research not on humans but on dogs. And Dr Olivier Rabin, the World Anti-Doping Agency science director, was dismissive of the Leiden paper. ‘We believe the current threshold is solid considering the scientific literature published on salbutamol over the past 20 years,’ he said.