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What is his excuse, I've not seen an official statement just web rumours based on, well, not very much?
He has failed a test and his excuse is sheer nonsense.
Why are you still on this thread TJ ? You've voiced your obnoxious opinion over and over, why do you feel the need to keep repeating yourself ?
I can’t warm to Froome, but you cannot fault his preparation. Yates and Pinot came into the race at race weight, and no doubt in top form. Froome rode into form and peaked at the right moment...when it mattered, not a week before. It’s a three week race and is raced as much with the head as with the legs.
Some people seem to delight in pissing on others chips.
The 4 F's - first find the trucking facts.....Froome used Salbutamol in an inhaler. WADA accepts that asthmatics should be allowed to use inhalers. Elite level athletes are more susceptible to exercise induced asthma than the general public Froome's tests showed an 'adverse analytical finding' (AAF). There is no decision yet from the UCI regarding this AAF.
Any elite level athletes in tonight - feel free to correct my comments ^^^^.
As TJ should understand from his work in the NHS, bodies secrete and excrete at different rates.
Comments about Froome being a drug cheat are crass, ignorant and have no factual basis. That may change with advances in drug testing and samples being retained for long term future testing.
Froome won another Grand Tour; chapeau.
Now for Le (or is it La) Tour
There’s more than a few of you who need to read up on what exactly Salbutamol can & can’t do - depending on its form of ingestion. It isn’t just useful as a puffer!
If you really think pro-cycling has gone from the being as dirty as puddle of slurry to as clean as virgin snow in a few short years you’re, I think, deluded..
Watch Icarus, read Breaking the chain.....do some research, doping & cycling go hand in bloody hand sadly!
I’d love our heroes to be clean.....but there’s way too much smoke & mirrors with TUE’s, Jiffy bags etc for me to believe it is.
FYI I race XC & train 15-20 hrs a wk regularly - no couch surfing here!
Professional sport and doping go hand in hand. I'm passed caring about it to be honest. They're all at it to a degree so I just focus on enjoying the spectacle.
First up, on the inhaler issue it should have been sorted out by now. Letting this drag into the grand tour season is bad for everyone.
Also if you think the guy with the inhaler is bad form then I expect the tour to be much worse, they will have been collecting bottles to piss into for months and short of banning the sale of tacks in France.... Could be a lot of neutralised racing.
Big shame for Yates, was there and riding well until that last few days, made the racing racing.
It shouldn't surprise me, but the BBC coverage of what is a magnificent achievement is absolutely disgusting. I just cannot understand the peculiarly British way of knocking people when they're at the top. Was nice to see the respect given to Froome by the Italian public. Must make a nice change from the piss the French throw over him and the shit that the British media do.
facts…..
Froome used Salbutamol in an inhaler.
We don't actually <span style="text-decoration: underline;">know</span> that this is the only route he used. That's pretty much the crux of this
WADA accepts that asthmatics should be allowed to use inhalers. Elite level athletes are more susceptible to exercise induced asthma than the general public Froome’s tests showed an ‘adverse analytical finding’ (AAF).
Yes. The TUE exists to allow it to be used at the high end of the normal usage and the threshold for an AAF is intended to be high enough to allow this but low enough to catch "alternative" uses. Not all that much evidence that it works as this rule might suggest, but rules is rules all the same (perhaps only until they're dismantled on appeal and then either dropped or rewritten)
There is no decision yet from the UCI regarding this AAF.
Criminal, that. The longer it drags on the worse it all looks and the more likely that a fudge will be created IMO
As TJ should understand from his work in the NHS, bodies secrete and excrete at different rates.
I'm guessing that a lot of Froome's off-season has been devoted to trying to demonstrate that he is different to the norm in this respect; maybe doing heavy days while using the stuff to the max allowed, to see what he can generate. Of course, he'll have used salbutamol in many other races so they ought to have lots of comparative data and not just this one result - he needs to hope that his general trend is to run high levels, even if this one is still "even higher"
Comments about Froome being a drug cheat are crass, ignorant and have no factual basis.
Agreed, or at least they're deliberately inflammatory. He has however returned an AAF which, if it can't be explained away, will become a failed drugs test. He is not innocent; he's in limbo, awaiting the clash between his team of docs and lawyers and theirs. I bet his are better funded.
That may change with advances in drug testing and samples being retained for long term future testing.
Did I imagine it or are they now routinely keeping all samples much longer than before ?
Im another who struggled to warm to Froome, but then i read his autobiography. Kid had a very strange upbringing, kenyan cycling authorities did all they could do put him down, he really had no choice but to switch his dual nationality to British.
If you see interviews away from the five mins after killing himself for 7 hours, he comes across much better, a very warm and nice guy but quite reserved.
I hope all this resolves positively and he hasn't stepped over the (somewhat grey) line 're supplements, TUE's etc. He's a phenomenal athlete. But bag of spanners, Yes!
It shouldn’t surprise me, but the BBC coverage of what is a magnificent achievement is absolutely disgusting
Yep when Froome wasn't in the action we got very little coverage, not even a semi live tt commentary which could have been the most crucial stage then back in it when Yates fell away.
Froome gained most of his by plummeting like a brick off the Empire State Building down every hill.
No he didn’t. He gained time consistently on every gradient, downhill, flat and up. There were only two short periods when he lost about 10s each, when the chasers managed to vaguely organise themselves for a few minutes.
It’s almost like the Froome apologists didn’t actually watch the race. (Or maybe not watched cycling for long enough to understand what happened last week.)
two short periods when he lost about 10s each, when the chasers managed to vaguely organise themselves for a few minutes
TBH, that's how it seemed to me - sure, Froome was committed but it was a pretty shit "chase"
Whilst I am not a huge Sky fan, i think they have been dull in the past, they are damned if they do and damned if they don't really. If Froome does something exciting and lights the race up like the other day, he's on drugs, if they sit on the front controlling the race then they are dull. if Yates wins 3 stages and does something exciting, he doesn't get the abuse, Astana have had ban after ban yet seem to fly under the radar when it comes to grief?
I really wanted to see Yates do it, as he deserved as he gave absolutely everything, but it was interesting to see how Sky tackled the stage with Froome 80km breakaway, whilst every other team had their normal fuelling strategies, Sky had every member of their large staff out on the course in hi-viz jackets with bidon and gels/food for Froome, even Brailsford was dishing out food, so Froome had far greater access to nutrition. They asked Dumoulin if he had the same, and he said no, they'd just done what they always do.
Astana have had ban after ban yet seem to fly under the radar when it comes to grief?
Astana get loads of grief when they do what Sky do. Someone on this very thread described Aru as the villain of the piece.
Suggesting that Froome managed an 80km breakaway because he had recce’d the downhill and had food helpers is ridiculous. That is a typical Brailsford excuse designed to mollify the hard of thinking. If that’s all it takes to make a huge breakaway why do you think nobody else does it? And how much difference does grabbing food from a static helper make compared to having a car full of food at your shoulder? The very fact that Brailsford said it was entirely planned should raise other questions about known power outputs and expenditure, etc.
Well i bet you're fun on a night out, why do you feel fuelling strategy can play now part?
Why recce'ing a route can play no part, Sky were the only ones that recce'd the Zoncolan stage well before the race?
If it is all about power output and nothing more, then why were his biggest gains over Dumoulin made on the descents, where Dumoulin didn't take him on man to man, he decided to stay with the group in the hope they'd assist?
I think that Brailsford's comments don't mollify things, it actually takes something away for those that still see something magical in a performance from like that, people want to romanticise a great ride like that, and he turns round and explains it with cold calculated science of fuelling and breaking down every part of the stage and look at specific power outputs for each metre of it, doesn't mollify it, it cheapens it.
They specifically interviewed Dumoulin about the strategy and he specifically said that they simply don't have the budget and the staff numbers to emulate that. If Sky weren't a team to emulate and try to ape that they do, then why do so many teams warm up on turbos now, or so many have their own chefs etc. Not saying it's good, and that bringing it all back to science is exciting, but that has always been there way. There is a reason the number of sports scientistist, nutritionists, aerodynamics experts etc has tripled around British Cycling and Sky and the like. They have the money to be able to explore every angle, and yes that makes them dull, which is why i've never been a big fan, and why i found Yates exciting, but if you listened to the interviews with Matt White they had planned Yates race stage by stage as well what he did was very calculated, give it everything to get the time lead, even intermediate points, to take into the TT then try and hold on, ultimately it backfired, but it was very planned.
why were his biggest gains over Dumoulin made on the descents
The biggest loss was on the first descent, when Dumoulin waited to get the chase group together, giving up a minute in the process.
Not sure how Brailsford could’ve been at the side of the road handing out snacks - surely he was in the team car following?
Also doubtful about the fueling thing as I doubt the rest of the field were going hungry in comparison
Well i bet you’re fun on a night out,
Not sure what that’s got to do with a discussion about pro road racing. Is it a childish put-down, perhaps?
I wonder what the chat would be like if Domoulin had managed to take back a minute over the last few k's? Only he bonked on the previous climb and was retching while crawling along as he tried to fuel himself. But somehow he managed to get himself up at the sharp end and attack the pink jersey!
so anyone questioning Froome has to look at that performance with the same cynical view yet somehow you are all bashing sky not the performances of others?
if anything it shows the importance of a well thought out strategy for a stage and how fuelling can go wrong, yet the bedwetters just want to see a conspiracy.
FWIW I’m not a sky fan but a cycling fan, I like various riders/teams of different nationalities, apart from Astana obviously.
OK, if i what i am saying is all pants, re-watch the stage and look out for the Sky kitted out helpers in hi-viz.
So yes he can go back to a team car etc for food, but that takes time, you see him take a number of bidons and gels from helpers.
They interviewed Alex Dowsett and he clearly admitted he had got his fuelling wrong on a number of occasions during the race, so to say that they can just have what they want, when they want is wrong, when they don't have domestiques with them to go back the cars, then GC riders can struggle to take food from cars themselves outside of the feed zones, there is a reason that even with team cars, there is a reason they still have road side helpers. Sky are clinical, every metre of that stage was planned, they know down to the watt, what fuelling stragey is needed, what power output is needed for every given part of a climb to not allow him to go into the red.
Was the dirt road climb without team cars? So only neutral service like they do on some of the Flanders burgs? That might explain why they have people on the roadside plus it’s a bit tricky for a hand out on the descents.
Not sure how Brailsford could’ve been at the side of the road handing out snacks – surely he was in the team car following?
Listen to the interviews with him where it explains it. They knew that was the one part of the course they could make major gains on. It's far too narrow and steep to be going back to the cars, getting food and coming back up. The race was going to be full gas so the chance of having any domestiques left was minimal, never mind domestiques capable of dropping back half a mile down a mountain to the car and coming back with more food.
Everyone in Team Sky except the actual people driving the cars was out on that mountain in pre-arranged spots - even the girl doing the social media feed, the driver of the kitchen truck, the mechanics. It wouldn't surprise me if they'd have roped in some volunteers as well - I know they do that at Paris-Roubaix. The staff get collected by the cars coming through in the convoy afterwards.
No-one else ever thinks of these fairly basic things - they rely on the age old "oh we'll hand it up at the feed zone" which then means the rider has to carry a load of extra weight and runs the possibility of running out of food. Froome knows that descent, he's recce'd it and trained on it and a rider on their own in technical terrain like that is always going to be quicker than a disorganised chase group, especially when that chase group has a comparatively crap descender* in it. You wait - at the Tour half the field is going to have staff / volunteers on every major climb handing up food & water!
*yes, I know he could outride anyone on here with just one hand on the bars, I mean compared to the rest of the people in the group / Froome
Also doubtful about the fueling thing as I doubt the rest of the field were going hungry in comparison
It's 80km of lone effort at pretty much threshold - he's going to need every calorie he can get, it's not like hiding in the bunch on a flat stage. Also means he doesn't need to think about it, doesn't need to waste effort hanging around at a car picking up a gel or wondering when the next motorbike can get a bottle to him or wondering if he can hold out just a bit longer cos he's only got 1 gel left - it's all just there for him.
If you've ever raced (road, CX, XC, doesn't matter), you'll know the difference between doing it solo - wondering if the bike will last, if you've got enough food etc - and doing it with support when you can grab a gel or bottle every time, you've got mechanical backup. Makes a huge difference mentally.
I don’t doubt that Sky did their prep..
Other things are well open to question!
I think there are fewer dopers than in previous yrs, though I still think it’s pretty endemic. The dopers are ahead of the testers when it comes down to it & I doubt that many of the leading riders today are 100% clean. I don’t think they dope to the same extent now & micro-dosing is being used. I also think the more money you have the better your doping program is.
Having said that I’ll still be watching the TDF this year & hoping for some great racing..
I’ll just be doing it with my eyes open to the state of the sport.
I’d like to believe in fairytales but pro-cycling has too much history, a lot of it VERY recent, for me to be that naive..
@crazy-legs thanks for the insight on the guys doing the feeding, didn't see too much so didn't realise about that. God is in the details.
I knew a few of of the better dinghy sailors in the late 60s and 70s who were some of the first to get really technical with their gear and training. Chatting with Rodney Pattison about racing FDs was like chatting with Sir Dave about bikes.
Chill out everyone and watch pharmacy road on sky go😃
Someone asked earlier why sky get such pelters for doping in a way other teams do not
I think this is two reasons - they are "British" and cheating is just not the British way and also they set out their stall as cleaner than clean and have been caught out lying and while staying ( probably) within the letter of the law it is no doubt at all they have not adhered to the spirit of the law with overuse of TUEs in very dodgy circumstances ie their riders have needed steroids for their asthma just before the big tours on numerous occasions
We the public dislike hypocrites. Remember " no needles"?
Teej you just cant leave it can you? 😁 i thought for a bit you had taken the feedback and walked away but no..... I dont suppose you could start another thread to discuss doping in cycling and leave those that want to enjoy discussion of the race to get on with it please? Will you be doing the same on the Tour thread and veulta thread when they come round? ☹
Andy - I was answering an earlier question thats all. I thought it pertinent.
Considering that an aaf is supposed to be kept secret, I wonder how many over riders have cases hanging over them?
And the reason why team sky get more grief, it's the British way. We support people on the way up, decide they've got too good/big for their boots, and then kick them back down again. I think it's a jealousy thing, someone does something truly amazing, and people are so bitter and twisted that they can't achieve anything even comparable to this, it makes them feel better if that person's reputation is destroyed.
I think TJ is well within his rights to comment on the thread. If you don’t like what he says don’t read it, or block him (?)
Doping is as much part of pro-cycling as a pigs bladder is in football.
Stick your fingers in your ears & your head in the sand if you like, but it’s a truth that’s not going away!
I wish it wasn’t so but it is..
Lifted this from The Times:
"
Boiled down, Chris Froome’s victory at the Giro d’Italia was achieved in just one extraordinary afternoon. On Friday, trailing the pink jersey, Simon Yates, by 3min 22sec, and the defending champion, Tom Dumoulin, by 2min 54sec, Froome went solo with 80 kilometres and three high mountains left to race. He crested the Finestre alone, extended his advantage over the Sestriere and then held on for the summit finish at Jafferau. Froome won stage 19 by more than three minutes, giving him the overall lead and, two days later, his history-making third consecutive grand tour victory.
To his supporters, Froome’s solo raid was one of the best single-stage performances ever in a three-week race. His detractors, however, viewed the performance with suspicious incredulity. Even a wide-eyed <span class="paywall-EAB47CFD">George Bennett, the GC rider on Team Lotto NL-Jumbo, responded immediately after the stage by stating that Froome had “done a Landis” — a reference to Floyd Landis’s notorious solo attack to Morzine at the 2006 Tour de France, before the American was banned for drugs. Bennett later clarified that he had not meant to imply that Froome was doping, but still felt the Sky leader had performed “the greatest comeback since Easter Sunday”.</span>
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Regarding that afternoon in the Italian Alps, the case for the prosecution has been made all over social media. By contrast, here are some of the arguments for the defence.
<b>1) Froome gained most of his time on the descents</b>
Estimates vary, but Froome gained at least half of his three-minute lead on the long descents from the Finestre and the Sestriere climb: probably about a minute on the former, 30 seconds on the latter. Descending solo and picking your own lines is an advantage, especially for a rider as fearless as Froome. Among the pursuers, Tom Dumoulin was particularly angry about the way his group tackled the downhill sections, pointing the finger especially at Sébastien Reichenbach for “descending like a grandmother”, and Thibaut Pinot has long been mocked for his caution downhill. By contrast, Froome’s descending prowess has been widely known, especially after his successful downhill attack off the Peyresourde at the 2016 Tour de France.
<b>2) The time gap was not thathuge</b>
Froome’s victory was made to look even more epic because Simon Yates, the overnight leader, lost almost 40 minutes. But Yates’s time can basically be discounted. He cracked badly and had to give up on the stage and the race. The next four finishers lost between 3min and 3min 23sec — or about 2.5 seconds per kilometre. On such difficult terrain, where riding solo does not have the same disadvantages it would have on the flat, such a gain is plausible — especially for a rider with Froome’s time-trialling prowess. As for the comparisons with Landis, they are overexaggerated: Froome gained 3min 23sec over Dumoulin; Landis gained more than seven minutes on Óscar Pereiro in his infamous 2006 attack.
<b>3) Froome was not as tired as other riders</b>
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<figcaption class="Media-caption"><span class="Media-captionContainer">Froome attacked the mountainous stage solo for 80 kilometres<small>TIM DE WAELE/GETTY IMAGES</small></span></figcaption></figure>
It is no secret that Froome is the best grand-tour rider in the peloton and he had trained specifically to peak in the final week of the Giro. Because of his crash on the opening day of the race, he had not been riding at his most aggressive while recovering from his injuries (in fact, he had been losing time). Although he won the stage to Monte Zoncolan, compared to his previous grand tour victories, and compared to Yates and Dumoulin especially, Froome had spent relatively little time in the front of the peloton up until Friday afternoon.
<b>4) The chase group underperformed</b>
Five riders formed the group to chase Froome down: Tom Dumoulin, Reichenbach, Richard Carapaz, Miguel Ángel Lopez and Thibaut Pinot. Of those five, Lopez and Carapaz appeared more interested in marking each other in competition for the best young rider’s jersey and Reichenbach later apologised to Dumoulin for not pulling his weight. Dumoulin and Pinot (second and fifth on GC at the time) were motivated, but gambled, perhaps wrongly, that riding as a bickering group of five was still better than a co-operative pair.
<b>5) The attack was meticulously planned</b>
Sky’s habit of blowing their own trumpet winds people up, but there is no doubt they got their strategy right. Froome’s domestiques rode such a high pace at the bottom of the Finestre that his rivals struggled to find the extra ten per cent needed to chase him down when he made his move. Then with his escape confirmed, Froome was kept fed and watered by up to 12 Sky staff members placed at intervals down the road and wearing DayGlo jackets to make them easier for him to spot. On a stage like that, staying fully fuelled is one of the biggest challenges.
<b>6) Some riders believed what they saw</b>
George Bennett’s comments about Froome “doing a Landis” whipped up a firestorm, but there were plenty of riders who responded with a simple “chapeau”. Alex Dowsett, the Briton riding for Katusha-Alpecin, said: “Take away all the other shit that’s going on about Froome — just focus on what [Team Sky] did. They took an exceptional athlete, they analysed the stage and they just did things better than everyone else. They’ve had a lot of bad press lately but they came in to do cycling better than everyone else and I think they showed that yesterday.”
<b>7) Froome knew the terrain</b>
In his post-stage press conference, Froome said that attacking on the gravel road at the top of the Finestre reminded him of his childhood riding in Africa. But he felt at home on the paved surfaces too, having used these roads frequently on training rides specifically to prepare for the Giro. Froome also knows better than almost any other rider what power output he is capable of sustaining (although after the stage he claimed not to know his power stats for that particular ride). He was furnished with all the information — but still needed to put it into practice.
<b>8) Sky had nothing to lose</b>
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Trailing by more than three minutes, Froome simply had to throw caution to the wind. Audacious as it looked, flying solo from 80 kilometres out was the only way he could win the Giro. Maybe even he didn’t expect the gamble to pay off as perfectly as it did — but he can’t be blamed for trying it."
Good comments well made..
(But I still don't think pro-cycling is clean....;-)....)
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Thanks mrlebowski, that is a good read, and I dont think cycling is clean either. With Froome, just need to wait and see, but silly has gone on for so long. However I do get tired of Internet Argu-bots dominating threads by saying the same thing repeatedly. You are right as well, time to look at that blocking gadget..
Pippa York’s view, for balance.
I have to say Phillipa has gone down a long way in my opinion. I'm sure she won't care. But that article seemed to pin a lot of its supposed credibility on something Sean Yates said. Anyone for a game of Yatesy Bingo? Ms York took the bonification there.
Sean Kelly obvs.
I think 'balance' is the wrong word to associate with that article.
Very poorly written, started with a conclusion then attempted to justify it by citing opinion rather than fact. No analysis.
Pippa york's article is pretty pathetic really. Lazy journalism.
<span style="font-size: 0.8rem;">Besides, I always take the opinions of convicted drug cheats with a punch of salt. </span>
Just says pretty much what the Indi Journo says, just in a different way.
I reckon theres one press release and they all just chop bits out of it and pass it around their other journo mates..
I thought it insightful.. better to have someone whose been involved with cycling comment on it rather than some blob sitting on a desk 600 miles away whilst eating doughnuts ..
IMO.
PY carries a lot of respect because she's an ex-pro and her insight is well regarded. I don't think this latest piece does her any favours - makes her look a little out of touch.
Phillipa York? Best not ask about her participation at TVM or Le Groupemont where there are well-publicised doping cases - just keep the Omerta and it'll all be rosy.
It's an opinion piece & not much more.
PY has only repeated & put together what others, who know far more about pro-cycling than anyone on here I'll wager, has stated.
Some of you need to find a bit of spine - what she's said is worth listening to particularly with Sky's very, very, grey history!
Salbutamol strikes me as being a drug that someone who was looking for an area to gain an edge might think it useful.
Grey area on the testing protocol? Check.
Has anabolic steroid properties if taken by IV or tablet? Check.
Convenient cover story that your athlete is an asthmatic? Check.
Sounds perfect for someone looking to bend the rules & we all know how close to the wind pro-cycling & Sky in particular like to get...
I don't doubt that Froome is quite an amazing athlete & quite probably the strongest GC rider for some time. He'd have won that stage clean or otherwise I feel. Likewise any other of his wins.
Having said that pro-cycling is far from clean...yet....IMHO.
Difficult, i really like David Millar's insight during the TdF but no denying his history, but he does give an actual racers view of strategy and positioning.
I think unfortunately cycling is always going to be tarnished, because it now holds itself to a really high standard and has been very public with the whole Armstrong scandal. So many other sports are absolutely rife with PED's, my beloved sport of rugby was awash with steroids for a long time, i remember guys coming back the next season and being twice the size, but doesn't get the same scrutiny.
The trouble, when do we start trusting riders, and when can we enjoy a display like Froome's the other day and hope that it is clean?
Sky haven't helped themselves either, the made a lot of noise about being the a "clean team" and getting rid of any staff with any sort of history, only then to blunder there way through interviews and go very quiet with all the Wiggins scandal, their PR people really didn't do them any favours.
Personally i do not think Froome's 80km attack was any more spectacular than Yate's ability to win 3 stages and do so well in the two TT stages for him, he emptied himself to do that for 2 1/2 weeks, ultimately he paid for it, but it was an amazing display of riding.
I personally am unsure of Froome, i use Salbutomol, and he knows that as he was in leaders jersey he was going to be tested every single day, to overdose on such a simple drug knowing you'll be tested and which does not really provide much benefit in a single days over-usage (he was fine the days either side) then he would have to be really stupid. If you are going to dose yourself for a single stage, there are more effective and less detectable drugs?
D’ya reckon Froomidge will be on the start line of the TdF ?
I’m not a betting man, but I think it’ll down to the sign on day whether he clips in or not. 🐵🙈🙉
Hmm, tricky one for the organiser. If you bar everyone with a sniff of wrongdoing, there will be about three riders, and if you bar the greatest GT rider of a generation, you risk making it a non event. On the flip side, it's means they can act holier than thou (when they new everyone was doping for years), and they will get a shit load of press coverage about it.
I reckon he'll be there, i think Sky aren't daft, if they genuinely thought he was going to get a ban or a finding against him, he wouldn't of started the Giro, they know what evidence they are relying upon and what their lawyers are saying, i think he would of been quietly side-lined, they cannot afford much more bad PR, especially with Sky as a company potentially being sold.
What can they actually do, he had an adverse finding, this isn't a fail of a dope test, it is an anomaly that needs explaining, and if anyone can afford the nest sports scientists to explain an anomaly and make the science "fit" the case, then it is Sky.