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news
Chris Froome on Alpe d'Huez (picture copyright Anne Martin)Floyd Landis: Chris Froome salbutamol case could cause Team Sky to implode
Floyd Landis, the American former cyclist stripped of his 2006 Tour de France victory after testing positive for testosterone, has said that the Chris Froome salbutamol case could lead to the end of Team Sky.
The 42-year-old, whose testimony helped lead to his former US Postal Service team mate Lance Armstrong being banned from cycling for life and losing the seven yellow jerseys he won between 1999 and 2005, also hit out at Team Sky’s much vaunted “zero tolerance” approach to doping.
Froome, who last year won the Tour de France and the Vuelta, becoming just the third rider to win both races in the same season, was found to have twice the permitted level of the anti-asthma drug salbutamol in his urine following an anti-doping control conducted during the Spanish Grand Tour.
The four-time Tour de France champion has vowed to provide an explanation to the UCI in a bid to clear his name, but Landis told the Guardian’s Martha Kelner that he believes the 32-year-old will receive a ban.
He said: “There is evidence that salbutamol can be performance enhancing if it’s used orally or intramuscularly.
“It’s very difficult to get to the level Chris Froome showed by using an inhaler. If that will form his excuse I think it’s nonsense and I don’t think many buy it.
“He’s trying to defend himself because he has everything to lose. I feel sympathy for him but if he doesn’t face it now he will have to later.”
News of Froome’s adverse analytical finding for salbutamol broke in December at the end of a year in which Team Sky had been in the spotlight due to the Jiffy Bag controversy involving Bradley Wiggins, among other issues, calling into question the “zero tolerance” approach that was trumpeted ahead of its debut season in 2010.
Former Team Sky coach Shane Sutton poured further fuel on the fire last year when he said that use of otherwise banned drugs under a therapeutic use exemption – which require there to be medical grounds for a rider to be allowed to take the medication in question – was acceptable in pursuit of “marginal gains.”
Referring to the delivery to former Team Sky doctor Richard Freeman of testosterone patches at his office at the velodrome in Manchester, Landis told the Guardian: “Sometimes random or coincidental things happen but I’ve got to be honest.
“I find it very hard to believe a package of testosterone was accidentally mailed to a velodrome.
“We can take from what Shane has said they were at least pushing the limit with certain things.
“Now, with Froome’s failed test, if you take all those things together, there’s no defending that team. Any reasonable person would have more questions.
“There’s no belief in that zero tolerance system any more; that was never a real thing,” he continued.
“It was just great PR about marginal gains and all these cute little sayings they thought up.”
Talking about the prospect of Froome being found to have committed an anti-doping rule violation, he added: “When you have someone that high profile who suffers a ban it usually means the whole thing implodes.
“If I was on the board of directors or an executive at Sky or any of the companies who sponsor them I would be long gone. At some point they have to make a decision that looks ethical.”
Landis initiated the ongoing whistleblower lawsuit against Armstrong that will go to court later this year and which has since been joined by the US Department of Justice.
The lawsuit alleges misuse of federal funds in the shape of the US Postal Service’s sponsorship of the team, which was found to have had a institutionalised doping programme.
Armstrong, should he lose the case, could be liable for punitive damages of around $100 million – three times the amount of the sponsorship – while as the initiator of the action, Landis could receive a third of any sums recovered.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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22 comments
Really bad cheat wants to have everyone be as bad as he was....
team sky are no different from the cheats that went before them. they will try to get away with what they can. they use money and power within the uci and the press to shut detractors up. they are utter hypocrites. Landis is 100% correct. those who bought into the the team sky myth are as deluded as those who bought into LA and us postal. We all want a hero we can believe in, well, sorry folks, that just makes us look dumb and immature. grow up and face reality.
Give Landis a break. He spoke out when virtually no one else had the balls and what happened? He had his life torn apart by the Armstrong machine and nobody gave a shit.
I don't believe he is a hypocrite - no more so than any of the other riders who've decompressed from the pro peloton and talk about their experiences. Those who pick and choose the ex-dopers whose opinions they value and those they don't based on some internal bias are worse...
As ever, the problem is a noble sport tainted by wealth and fame. The Tour, Giro and Vuelta may be the most famous races, but the toughest in the world today are perhaps the long distance amateur races like the European Transcontinental www.transcontinental.cc/ proper adventure racing that truly embodies the spirit of the early days. Riding through the night, with no support (or even a team), the competitors battle hunger, fatigue and packs of rabid Romanian dogs.
Sadly, for the competitors, the prizes are modest and it's not untelevised. Thankfully, for the sport, the prizes are modest and it's not televised.
I think I more-or-less agree. Sport should be low-stakes and amateur, or it becomes ridiculous.
This stuff goes on interminably. It will never end because its inherent to the nature of ultra-high-stakes competitive sport. It follows from the intrinsicallly silly nature of such an activity.
If you set up an an entirely arbitrary kind of compeition (as opposed to one which has an objective purpose external to itself - like wanting to be the best surgeon or best bricklayer, say, where people are able to make a sensible judgement about how much 'cheating' is justified by the real value of the outcome), and then arrange it so that vast financial and status stakes are dependent on the outcome - stakes completely disproportionate to the actual value of the activity - then you will get constant pushing at the boundaries and attempts at cheating.
Then everyone involved gets all upset at the inevitable concequences of their own attitudes.
The only way to stop doping and all other forms of cheating is to lower the stakes so that it is no longer worth the risk and effort to engage in it. Either accept that it doesn't really matter all that much who can cycle the fastest, or stop fussing about doping and other forms of cheating, because if you attach such diproportionate importance to the results such cheating becomes inevitable.
I have reservations about testing systems and controls, can still remember Linford Christie and his disqualification for a jump start, which subsequently turned out to be wrong. That was simple electronics, yet it cost him his chance for a medal. Sky and Froome knew he would be tested so I find it incredulous that he would take excessive quantities of any drugs, particularly if they had no performance benefit.
You should probably do a little more reading up on that, especially given the levels recorded
This is the most informative insight into the salbutamol anomoly which I've read, it delves into the 'grey area' of the Froome leaked test results.
Worth a read all the way through (there's lots of soundbites in there, please read it all). http://sportsscientists.com/2017/12/brief-thoughts-froomes-salbutamol-re...
The whole Froome thing is kind of just killing the sport for me. I don't see it anywhere near getting caught with EPO or anything so blatant. This is something that basically has no performance benefit (apart from opening up airways to their normal levels - riding hard without that can damage your health), is not difficult to test against and Froome and Sky obviously knew he'd be tested. It's either an error by the doctor or something that fundamentally isn't understood in a flawed system. It's not even a banned substance. I'm not suggesting if found guilty there should be no punishment, but it is plainly not the same as running a full on doping programme.
If it brings down the best GT rider of a generation, it kind of makes the sport pointless as far as i'm concerned. And i'm not a massive fan or anything, I just feel he is obviously genetically gifted and a sport without it's best isn't really a sport.
I think this is all heading up to Sky leaving as the title sponsor, or not renewing the sponsorship deal..
Without the £ from Sky, Brailsford should pack it in, after fifteen years of intense work such as this and time away from his family, he must be thinking about retiring or taking a step back or a step towards some political sort of job at the UCI.. maybe this is a complex move to discredit Sky and 'block' Brailsford from joining the UCI or any other body he might be considering, on the basis he's tainted by controversy...
There is no denying that Sky, Brailsford, Sutton, Ellingworth etc.. have done an amazing job of delivering results and driving cycling to the level it's at now in the UK where wattbikes and turbo trainers are almost a normal excercise aid for anyone whether they cycle on the road or not, where the words weekend warrior, mamil, Wiggings, Froome, Cavendish, are all part of the nation's vocabulary.. 20years ago the nation and the media fed us football, rugby and tennis. Brailsford with the money from Sky has had a very large hand in delivering to a new generation 'cycling', whether that's road racers, cyclocrossers, mtb'ers, commuters, kids on the way to school, BMX'ers.. the whole spectrum has all been about the money invested from Sky in the early 2000's. Murdoch may be a hateful caricature, but while the Nation has fed itself on £50 a month subscriptions we as a cycling community have benefitted far more than other hobbyists.
With Brailsford discredited and without Sky as title sponsor.. what will the future cycling landscape beyond this upcoming generation, look like in the UK?
Maybe it'll look a bit like French cycling has for the past 33 years - but without the TdF to remind everyone how shite they are at it.
Toerag
If Mr Landis had been good at cheating and not such a turncoat, then there would be some credability in his comments. As it is, he was part of a successful doping program, left it thinking he could as good on his own, messed up and decided to go "supergrass". Ironically, his whistle blowing could earn him more money than his career ever did.
He has no experience or evidence about Sky and can only speak his opinions. As with Armstrong/USPS the whole picture becomes clear by piecing the small incidents together. This might happen to Sky. Who knows? They seem very adept at covering their tracks or not going outside the rules so what Sky do might never be known. If there is an ex-Sky rider who wishes to follow Floyd's lead then that rider's comments would mean a lot more.
Teirnan Locke tried to. He had nothing.
Why is Landis being given airtime by any of the cycling media?
Who cares what Landis thinks? he's probably lying anyway
I watched the movie "The Program" last night, and while I understand that it is a heavily edited, dramatic version of the US Postal team doping scandal, there is no doubt that Landis was guilty of taking part in the most organised doping scheme ever seen. While that makes him an expert on illegal doping eleven years ago, it doesn't give him the right to comment on other, cleaner teams now.
His comments and the fact he will now be profiting from his previous drug taking with Armstrong make him look jealous and like a hypocrite and perhaps it might be better if he just kept his mouth shut.
Pushing the limit of what is legal is not the same as cheating. What Team Sky is doing is borderline cheating, but they arent actually breaking The Rules and I think this is what irritates the likes of Landis, Tiernan Locke et al. They pushed too far beyond the border, whereas Sky have been right up to the line several times (and had to endure scrutiny because of it) but havent (yet) made the error of going too far.
This cunt Landis is having a giraffe.
Whats interesting for me here is that Sky might have finally made the proverbial cunt of things, over cooked the pudding, shit the bed, etc...
How do you know?
Jiffy bag was a lost cause because the truth never came out.
Froome has yet to demonstrate his innocence.
There is nothing conclusive to say that they are clean, and as long as this is the case there will always be doubters and I would say that lack of transparency hints at rule breaking.
A long as the onus is on the accused to prove innocence, I can't see innocent until proven guilty being acceptable. I'm not fussed whether he rides, or not, until the truth comes out (if ever). I would like him treated the same as others.
How do I know what? That pushing up to the limit of what is legal isn't the same as cheating?
Well, that's because pushing the limit of what is legal is not the same thing as cheating. The former is using all of the wiggle room available within the rules to give yourself a fair competitive advantage, the latter is doing things definitively defined in The Rules as Not Allowed in order to give yourself an unfair competitive advantage. I think - yes, this is me expressing an opinion - I can't lay claim to ownership of the Definitive Truth - that Sky have been doing the former very well for years, but have possibly on this occasion fallen over the line and started doing the latter.
I don't know how to make that any clearer. Maybe a Venn diagram would help? A sketch in crayon? Some sort of aminated .ppt?
Or did you mean that I can't possibly know, like really know that Sky are 100% clean? Because I would say that you are right - I can't possibly definitively know that Sky are clean with 100% certainty. But I can trust that if they had been doing anything completely wrong and overtly cheaty then they would have been found out by now? Innocent until proven guilty, innit? There is nothing conclusive to say they are dirty either, at least there wasn't before the Froomebutamol case.
Which is why I think this case is especially interesting, since Sky might have pushed their suit too far and actually be just as bad as some individuals actually believe them to be, this time.
Yes, that is what I meant.
Not quite the person to comment, but he has a point.
Landis is worse than Armstrong, we was rubbish at cheating. Not really sure why he should get a penny of any rewards against him, especially $33m.
No, he's way better than LA. Landis, nameds names, and spilled the beans on everything. As for not being good at cheating, you've never found it strange that all the big riders got busted for doping the moment they left USPS?? Almost as if someone tipped off the authorities.