So what do you think the Lawyer thinks?

How will it be decided which results Froome will lose if he does get a ban? Does the independent arbitrator decide that?

The situation is unclear but it seems if Froome gets a ban, then he will definitely lose the Vuelta title from September 2017, as that was when the tests showed his [salbutamol levels were too high]. If, as he could have done under the UCI rules, he opted to “self provisionally suspend” after the Vuelta, and remained self-suspended while this legal process was ongoing, he could then have used his period of self-suspension to get any sanction backdated to the date of the adverse test (September 7). He didn’t do that as he wanted to ride and win in the World Champs, Giro etc.

UCI anti-doping rules state [ed. see 10.11 here] if the case against Froome is proven, he is banned from the date of the UCI anti-doping hearing. The independent arbitrator also however appears to have the power [ed. under 10.8], “unless fairness requires otherwise”, to render void all competitive results that the rider has obtained from the date of the positive sample to the date of ineligibility.

This possibly puts Froome’s World and Giro titles into play. Whether the UCI independent arbitrator would do this is a matter for him. Precedent on backdating bans in cycling exists and notably Contador’s case at CAS in 2012. One of the arbitrators on that case was Ulrich Haas, who is the UCI independent arbitrator in the Froome case.

By not accepting on the day he now risks more, his reputation would have been gone then if he had admitted it but there probably would have been a relatively small punishment that would probably have had him back in time for the tour, instead he has risked it all, gone all in so to say on being innocent. What does that tell you? When backed into a corner do you bet the house on it?

Edit – who you having a go at?

Let me guess, you work for a bank, am I right?

You.

i posted it as I thought (other) people might be interested in what a lawyer thought.

tbh I not really interested in your opinion on it. You’re too morally ambiguous for my liking.

The lawyer doesn’t say very much there, he mostly says that nothing is proven, nothing is certain and if they can’t prove it wasn’t a bad test or a test not working they could be in trouble.

I’m not sure how my morals are ambiguous, I say what rules are written down are the rules

Yes he should race. The rules regarding an AAF are clear and due process has been followed.

With all this talk of Froome it’s easy to forget S Yates’AAF for asthma treatment, for which he did not had a PED. Consider also his DS Matt White is a former doper with USPS and was sacked as Oz national coach and Garmin for previous doping offences.

Consider also how fresh Chaves and Yates looked at the top of Etna –  no signs of fatigue they simply rode away from everyone and made some good rider look ordinary. They just didn’t look like they’d gone into the red once on that climb.

Then consider how spectacularly backwards Chaves went. He claimed “just a bad day, you know… this is bike racing”. He looked seriously ill. Was he ill? Nobody claimed this. It was relatively early in the race and he’s young yet fairly experienced enough to recover very quickly from a big effort. That said, it didn’t even look like a big effort he just rode away.

i then think of Yates going backwards. Again, he looked terrible, sick not just tired.

Contrast that with Froome who really fought to get off the front with numerous attacks on the Zoncolan before he eventually broke free nor far from the line. He looked broken after that stage. Chaves & Yates looked like they could do it all again after Etna.

I wonder why people aren’t suspicious of Yates & Chaves? I mean, in the past when a rider goes so spectacularly backwards after looking so good, we’ve since found it was usually down to a bad bag of blood. I wonder why nobody seems to be saying this now? It’s not like Mat White wouldn’t know about these things after his USPS experiences…

I think gaming the rules to legalise doping is cheating

Playing to the rules is cheating? Well I never.

I wonder why people aren’t suspicious of Yates & Chaves?

To a point we have to trust the anti doping bodies and the UCI to do their jobs. Simply using the past as an example of why it can’t be working now is flawed.

If in the past the majority were doping then you were looking at the efforts of doper vs doper. Today we should have clean vs clean, blowing up is part of that. When chaves went backwards, team instructions could almost be make sure you make the cut off and save yourself for the rest.

With all this talk of Froome it’s easy to forget S Yates’AAF for asthma treatment, for which he did not had a PED

Yates did not have an AAF. He received a ban because he was treated with a prohibited substance and didn’t apply for the required TUE. So the system worked and he was caught, although you can argue whether a four month ban for “non-intentional doping” is a reasonable sanction or not. I think if the sanctions are too lenient, there’s going to be a temptation for unscrupulous teams to take a risk, misuse medical treatments and just claim they forgot to fill out  the TUE form, if they get caught.

Bardet & Dumoulin pitch in. Unsurprisingly they say Froome shouldn’t ride:

Romain Bardet on Chris Froome: ‘If I were him I would not consider starting the Tour de France’

Bardet & Dumoulin pitch in. Unsurprisingly they say Froome shouldn’t ride:

Not calling them hypocrites. But they’ve not been put in the same position. I’d bet if something similar happened to them, and they believed they’d done no wrong, they’d do the same as Froome and Sky.

As would more or less every other professional rider.

If Froome did withdraw it would be trebles all round in any team with GC contender.

Good rallying call for all the locals to get the fancy dress out really and give him a hard time. I would have said including a “But I want everyone to respect the riders and the racing”

Playing to the rules is cheating?

so, you think taking performance enhancing drugs purely for performance enhancement purposes (and lying about it) is perfectly acceptable and all part of the game?

The rules are the rules. If the rules don’t work then change them, don’t get pissy at teams for pushing them as far as they can go, because if one team isn’t doing it you can be sure all the other ones are.

As for Froome, it’s shame his AAF was leaked, he’s now in a position that he shouldn’t be in and that other athletes in a similar position have avoided. Innocent until proven guilty imo. The evidence should be presented and a verdict handed down. It’s the only fair way of doing things, especially given that the rule that has potentially been broken is about a) how much of the drug you can take at a time, not how much is in your system later and b) it’s a drug with a debatable performance enhancing effect.

Funny you should mention Yates drug ban. Compare how he reacted to (what is claimed to be a simple failure to register a TUE for asthma medication) to somebody else in a similar situation… 🤣

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/simon-yates-accepts-four-month-ban-and-apologises/

One of the reasons people aren’t flagging up Yates is that their man beat him, so therefore must be cleanz. Simple.

i do find it hilarious dismissing observational (ie impirical) evidence as completely flawed yet adhering to the actual definition of insanity. Go fanboy fan!

what iteration of we’re all cleanz now (honest) are we on now? The post Festina ‘99 tour was dubbed the tour of redemption (that went well) and then there was the memo that went round after lance disappeared for everyone that they can stop doping now, and then the BP which cured everything… then the sky we’re all cleanz (apart form the gaming TUEs and dodgy Jiffy bags (oh and the mistaken test delivery)). I just can’t keep up.

You need to pace yourself a bit. There’s not going to be an outcome from the AAF process for months yet, and you are just going to blow up and go out the back on the first climb if you try and keep up this level of outrage till then.

Anyone else have an image of Metalheart sat on his sofa for the Tour in his pants just lathering at the mouth and self-flagellating whilst it’s on dribbling every time Sky come on “fan boyz, fan boyz, with their logical arguments, fan boyz…” For someone who has been watching the sport since the 80’s he seems to hate it…… maybe a switch to crown bowling or all the elderly doping on warfarin and Werthers Original?!

…..on the flip side, Sky have neutralised the Dauphine completely and made it dull, all top 4 riders despite not being able to stay upright on their bikes again… Who is their tyre sponsor?

You fan bois really are lapping up the “marginal gains” cr@p – it’s so full of holes it’s laughable….

But hey, keep knocking back the SIS “secret nutrional weapon”, it’s only been on sale from other companies for a decade!

🤣

Read back through my posts, where have i ever mentioned being a fan-boy? Every post actually says the opposite, i am not a fan of Sky, i find them too clinical and soulless, i don’t like what happened with Wiggins, i think Brailsford has made a lot of mistakes when it comes to PR and the media recently and they are far from the transparent team they set out to be, how is that a fan-boy? I really wanted Yates to win, but was his riding any less incredible (for 2 1/2 weeks, not one stage) than Froome’s, he rode out of his absolute skin, he must of been on at least 10 different drugs then mustn’t he?

What i have done is given a few logical arguments that Froome’s ride on Giro wasn’t some drug fuelled charge, and how it was possible, me sat here with my Sports Science degree, what would i know….

What makes me laugh, is people that provide no logical argument, never actually cite any actual science, just dismiss anyone that doesn’t have same opinion as them as “fan-boys” or something else dismissive in a Daily Mail Comments Section sort of way instead of reading the post clearly… if there is any big words you want explaining?

Again if you read my posts, you’ll see my comments about how i hate doping and how it ruined “my” sport of rugby, i’ve sat next to someone opening taking steroids and have been offered them on many occasions, i’d love all sport to be clean

Consider also how fresh Chaves and Yates looked at the top of Etna – no signs of fatigue they simply rode away from everyone and made some good rider look ordinary. They just didn’t look like they’d gone into the red once on that climb.

They are pure climbers – that’s their job. Equally, Dumoilin looks wrecked at the top of every big climb but does his job in the TT. What would be weird would be if Yates or Chaves then mullered everyone in the TT, or decided to mix it with Sagan in a sprint, or go on a heroic 80km solo. There’s only one rider who can do all of that, which is why so much suspicion falls on him, especially when he is pulled up for dodgy blood results and can’t explain it.

Everyone else must really be shit at the Dauphine as although those top 3 riders are all good, it seems bizarre that nobody is getting close. Bardet is never going to win the tour if he’s losing minutes at a time in every TT.

so, you think taking performance enhancing drugs purely for performance enhancement purposes (and lying about it) is perfectly acceptable and all part of the game?

Within the rules, absolutely.

What makes me laugh, is people that provide no logical argument, never actually cite any actual science

Indeed.  And what if someone did turn up who was a genuine freak of nature and just really good – how could they avoid this kind of suspicion?

There’s only one rider who can do all of that, which is why so much suspicion falls on him, especially when he is pulled up for dodgy blood results and can’t explain it.

Who got pulled for ‘dodgy blood results’? Genuinely curious.

Not necessarily you scud – but some of the other stuff is hysterical…

@molgrips – this is it, any rider like Froome, Dumoulin etc already are a freak of nature, what they do for 3 weeks isn’t training alone, 50% of it is purely genetics, i think everyone who ever saw Froome ride early on will state he was a terrible cyclist when it came to bike handling, he struggled to ride in the bunch etc. But they knew he had a massive VO2 so knew he had potential.

Dumoulin is far from a classical climber, but again, they know his VO2, what power he can put out for how long, and that he is why he is good a those climbs that are essentially a TT constant effort.

I think this is why Froome is coming under increased scrutiny, he is all of a sudden climbing, like a proper climber, he is attacking, not just riding to power and he has learnt how to descend, to me that it worth a lot more, than any tiny gain he may of got from Salbutomol, that was training and race craft, but these things are never mentioned.

Indeed.  And what if someone did turn up who was a genuine freak of nature and just really good – how could they avoid this kind of suspicion?

That’s partly what the biological passport system and anti-doping as a whole is meant to do. But the problem is that elite athletes are almost by definition physiological freaks to some extent. The idea that there’s a sort of level playing field where we all have the same potential, just isn’t realistic.

You or I could do the same level of training – or try to – as a top pro elite cyclist and sure, we’d end up being a faster donkey, but without the right genes and physiology, you’re never going to reach elite level. I think I may have mentioned it before, but there was a fascinating  documentary a few years back where the world record hurdler Colin Jackson went on a exploratory journey into his physiological make-up.

Turned out that that alongside Jamaican genes and quite a high composition of fast twitch muscle fibres, he also had incredibly rare ‘super high twitch’ fibres, which they only knew because they took a biopsy of his quadriceps and analysed it. His muscles simply were naturally more explosive than most athletes.

I’m not, before people start ripping into me, saying that this proves Froome is clean. Or that Sagan is naturally gifted or whatever. I’m just using it to show that sometimes top athletes really do have rare physiological attributes.

As to how they can ‘avoid this type of suspicion’ I guess the bottom line is that in absolute terms, they can’t. There will always be a belief by some that any sort of outstanding performance is evidence of cheating. What you can do is build an anti-doping infrastructure that’s as robust and thorough as possible, so that people can reasonably have a high level of trust in it and its ability to detect cheats.

Finally, in the end, pro cycling is just a glorified entertainment. It’s grown men and women riding bikes for money to amuse spectators. There are plenty more things in the world that are deserving of more anger and frothing fury than whether a professional cyclist is or is not cheating.

“Indeed.  And what if someone did turn up who was a genuine freak of nature and just really good – how could they avoid this kind of suspicion?”

Who got pulled for ‘dodgy blood results’? Genuinely curious.

Apologies. Urine not blood. I forgot about the **** levels of pedantry on here.

I think this is why Froome is coming under increased scrutiny, he is all of a sudden climbing, like a proper climber, he is attacking, not just riding to power and he has learnt how to descend, to me that it worth a lot more, than any tiny gain he may of got from Salbutomol, that was training and race craft, but these things are never mentioned.

Erm… that’s not strictly true.. Froomidge has always been a decent climber, back in the Barloworld days his Vuelta performance back then was pretty damn amazing. He has always had a massive VO2 capacity true, and his race craft was a little suspect but he was always a better descender than Wiggo…

So really all he’s done is perfect his flaws to become much better overall, hence his GC contentions.

Apologies. Urine not blood. I forgot about the **** levels of pedantry on here.

Sorry petal, didn’t mean to upset you. I was genuinely curious as to whether someone had failed a blood test that I didn’t know about rather than being pedantic for the sake of it.

Scud – thing is – the people who believe Froome has doped and been caught have provided plenty of logical argument as to how they have arrived at their position but the fanbois have their heads buried deep in the sand

tom Howard – you really think taking powerful steroids before a race under the pretence of a TUE is acceptable?  Both Froome and wiggins have done this and under the circumstances where these drugs are actually needed the person who was ill would be in hospital not taking part in a bike race.

It stinks.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Scud – thing is – the people who believe Froome has doped and been caught have provided plenty of innuendo as to how they have arrived at their position but the rest are waiting on proof

FTFY

tom Howard – you really think taking powerful steroids before a race under the pretence of a TUE is acceptable?

take it up with WADA/UCI

No scotroutes – none of us have proof either way but the post I refereed to stated “is people that provide no logical argument” which is bollox of the highest order.  they might be right or they might be wrong but the argument is logically sound and coherent.

Apologies. Urine not blood. I forgot about the **** levels of pedantry on here.

Sorry if you think it’s pedantic, but surely if Froome was genuinely doping it would have shown in BP, etc. as well.

I know someone said quack quack up there, i’m going to echo it. But only in the sense that TO ME everything I’ve read about this situation sounds like a test that isn’t fit for purpose / got messed up somehow. I can’t see any point why you’d dope excess levels of salbutomol mid race, and while others are positing stuff like masking, or some unknown effect that we haven’t discovered yet, I’ve yet to see any proof or even hint of proof to that other than ‘it’s Sky, they must be cheating’

I know Sky aren’t unsullied based on past evidence, and I too am not a fanboy (the Red-Yellow-Pink taunt previously was a deliberate troll, I’m sorry) but based only on the evidence I see before me specifically to this case I’m still on the fence re the outcome but firmly in the innocent till guilty camp.

none of us have proof either way but the post I refereed to stated “is people that provide no logical argument” which is bollox of the highest order.

What you suggested was that the people not shouting cheat from the rooftops have not provided a logical argument. that is untrue.

In summary for the burn him side

He took a huge amount on one day

We can’t tell you why you would take a huge amount on one day

We can’t give a single performance boosting reason for taking that at the back end of a tour

Dopers are always one step ahead

He has been taking it for months they screwed up his masking agent

They were using blood doping

He’s a cheat….

I doubt Wada or UCI thought there would be doctors willing to break the Hippocratic oath to the point of claiming a powerful steroid was for an illness when it at best was a position that medically is extremely dubious.

Wiggins one was the worst  Large injectable doses of a very powerful steroid before races he won – a drug that normally would only be used under the guidance of a respiratory consultant for extreme life threatening illness in people in hospital.

But – we all have entrenched positions and only one person knows the truth.  From where I sit the folk who think Froome and sky are clean are burying their heads in the sand and ignoring a mountain of evidence.

But – we all have entrenched positions and only one person knows the truth.  From where I sit the folk who think Froome and sky are clean are burying their heads in the sand and ignoring a mountain of evidence.

What evidence – I mean actual evidence not just your opinion or speculation

I doubt Wada or UCI thought there would be doctors willing to break the Hippocratic oath to the point of claiming a powerful steroid was for an illness when it at best was a position that medically is extremely dubious

Have they changed their position?

But – we all have entrenched positions and only one person knows the truth.

To be fair, you don’t so much have an entrenched position as a whole, carefully fabricated Maginot Line-style fortification 🙂