Froome in 2013 found himself in a different tactical situation to Armstrong. Froome’s decisive attack – like Miguel Indurain’s in 1994 – came just before Chalet Reynard. Beyond Chalet Reynard he rode a high tempo with Nairo Quintana until he dropped him. Thirteen years earlier, Armstrong was controlling tentative attacks into a buffeting Mistral, until Pantani’s moves five kilometres from the summit. The pair traded violent accelerations until they settled into a rhythm, prior to their bitter denouement.
All of that said, the instinctive scepticism persisted, the speculation over doping or hidden motors continues. So where did the deep-seated mistrust of Team Sky come from? Why was the Ventoux such a touchstone for judging Froome?
Beyond the predictable knee-jerk counter-accusations tossed at the sceptics – the trolls were resentful of Froome’s success, the French didn’t like foreigners, the conspiracy theorists had no understanding of sports science and performance analytics and so on – Team Sky’s attempts to build trust had been damaged by some key failings.
The team’s zero-tolerance policy had been flawed from the outset as they had recruited staff from a pool of professionals in which it was impossible to guarantee propriety. Nobody, beyond the team itself, believed that ‘zero tolerance’ was possible. Their ethical stance had been undermined by a series of confessions of past involvement in doping by key members of their coaching and medical staff, who had initially been vetted and given a clean bill of health. This suggested that their vetting process was unreliable.
The team’s judgement of ‘reputational risk’ could be questioned, given the recruitment of personnel such as Leinders and others, including Bobby Julich and Steven de Jongh. Their relationships and histories had been subject to speculation even prior to the team’s formation. That insight was easily available.
The zero-tolerance stance had been further undermined by an admitted use of TUEs (therapeutic use exemptions), allowing them to apply to the UCI’s medical committee to use prohibited products, in extenuating circumstances. Well before the furore over Wiggins, the team applied for such a TUE for Chris Froome, in April 2014, when he was allowed to use glucocorticosteroids to treat what was described as a chest infection prior to the Tour of Romandie.
Already behind in his build-up for that year’s Tour de France, Froome had pulled out of the previous weekend’s Liège–Bastogne–Liège and needed to test his form in the Swiss race. The argument that he should rest until his health had recovered, as adhered to by other World Tour teams within the MPCC, was rejected by Team Sky. Froome was granted a TUE, took the corticosteroids, rode in Romandie and won the race.
Team Sky defended their position, saying: ‘We follow the rules and ride clean.’ Many countered by arguing that, while the UCI decision to grant a TUE was within the rules, Team Sky’s ethical stance of zero tolerance had been compromised, that Froome should have been rested, but that such considerations had been overruled by performance objectives. Subsequently, I exchanged direct messages with Michelle Froome, who took me to task over comments I had made regarding this TUE. ‘Chris pulled out of LBL [Liège–Bastogne–Liège] to give him some more time to recover. He was not ill, he did not have a chest infection; his asthma was exacerbated due to a prior infection.’
Yet the Team Sky website had stated at the time that Froome had a mild chest infection and Brailsford had described him as ‘ill’, while Froome had been reported in the national press as saying: ‘I have had a chest infection.’
Michelle Froome responded: ‘Both of Chris’s TUEs were for exacerbated asthma. Cortisone is not used to treat chest infections – it’s an anti-inflammatory. It helps open the airways.
‘Chris couldn’t breathe without wheezing after the prologue at [the Tour of] Romandie and they applied for an emergency TUE for an asthmatic reaction.’
At the climax of the 2015 Tour de France, as the race headed through the Alps, Froome was again unwell. This time, however, just a year after the Romandie TUE, Froome said he had refused – on moral grounds – to apply for a TUE. ‘I didn’t feel having a TUE in the last week of the Tour was something I was prepared to do,’ he told the BBC in early 2017, adding: ‘It did not sit well morally with me.’
There have been other contradictions. The team’s response to questioning over its use of the legal but controversial painkiller, tramadol, has been confusing. In 2013, then team doctor Alan Farrell said that tramadol was ‘an effective painkiller when it’s used in a clinically appropriate scenario. Certainly in our team we would have used it in the past but only when justified.’
In April 2014, as his book Shadows on the Road was published, I interviewed former Team Sky rider Michael Barry. ‘I used tramadol at Sky,’ he said, adding that he saw some Sky riders using it ‘frequently’ in races.
However, the MPCC – the teams within the French-created Movement for Credible Cycling, the same teams who believed that a rider should be rested, rather than use a TUE – wanted tramadol banned by WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency). Team Sky, despite Christian Prudhomme’s public support for the collective, remain resolutely separate from the MPCC.
Jan Mathieu, the team doctor for the Lotto Belisol team, had said: ‘Tramadol is a really strong painkiller. It is dangerous for your concentration and you can become addicted to it.’ Others also spoke out against painkiller abuse, including Taylor Phinney, the American rider. ‘Some people find it surprising that riders would take painkillers or caffeine pills in races, but it is actually really common,’ Phinney said in 2012.
‘That stuff can make you pretty loopy. I don’t even want to try it as I feel it’s dangerous. You have to ask, “Why are you taking a painkiller?” Essentially, you are taking a painkiller to enhance your performance.’
In his book, Barry described tramadol as being ‘as performance-enhancing as any banned drug I had taken’ and added that ‘some riders took tramadol every time they raced’. ‘The effects are noticeable very quickly,’ he said. ‘Tramadol made me feel euphoric, but it’s also very hard to focus. It kills the pain in your legs and you can push really hard. After I crashed in the Tour de France I was taking it, but I stopped after four days.’
He then added, disconcertingly echoing the histories of Malléjac, Rivière, Simpson and so many others: ‘Tramadol allows you to push beyond your natural pain limit.’
After the interview with Barry was published, Team Sky issued a statement: ‘None of our riders should ride whilst using tramadol – that’s the policy. Team Sky do not give it to riders whilst racing or training, either as a pre-emptive measure or to manage existing pain. We believe that its side effects, such as dizziness and drowsiness, could cause issues for the safety of all riders.’
The statement added: ‘We also feel that if a rider has the level of severe pain for its appropriate use they should not be riding.’ Yet that level of pastoral care would seem at odds with the willingness to apply for TUEs for team leaders Wiggins and Froome.
The last, most provocative point, revolved around Froome’s alleged visits, in the company of Richie Porte, to Philippe Maire’s bike shop in Cagnes-sur-Mer, close to Nice. Maire had been a strong amateur rider, whose own aspirations for a pro career had fallen short. But he was friend and mechanic to the Côte d’Azur-based big names, counting Armstrong among them. In April 2014, written answers Armstrong had been compelled to give as part of a lawsuit filed by Acceptance Insurance named Maire as one of those who delivered performance-enhancing drugs to him.
Maire’s reputation as one of the best mechanics on the Côte d’Azur ensured that other professionals based in Nice and Monaco also visited him. But Maire was also cited by Tyler Hamilton as the ‘Motoman’ of legend, the handyman and drugs delivery boy to Armstrong during his seven-year streak. Owen Slot and I interviewed Maire for The Times in July 2013. He denied Hamilton’s claims, but then revealed that Froome and Richie Porte had made visits to his shop. He added that any further visits had subsequently been prohibited by Brailsford.
F
roome and Porte’s visits, Maire said, happened prior to Team Sky’s creation of a service course – a workshop and equipment store – in Nice. According to Maire, the visits had been at the instigation of his old friend – and Armstrong’s – Sean Yates, sports director at Team Sky during Wiggins’ golden year of 2012.
In response to Brailsford’s exhortations after the Ventoux stage, asking – understandably – that the media move beyond posing the same question in a hundred different ways, Owen Slot and I then sent an email to him asking for clarification on some points, including Maire’s claim that Froome and Porte had visited his shop. These were the questions, sent to Brailsford on two occasions in July 2013, that Owen and I drafted towards the end of that summer’s Tour de France.
1. If Chris Froome was doping in secret would you/Team Sky know? Nigel Mitchell [head of nutrition] told us that, except for urine testing to check hydration levels, there is no regular blood profiling/testing done within the team itself. What data do you have to be 100 per cent certain that you know what goes into his body?
2. When you share your data, how can we be sure that it is genuine? Could you not concoct data files with false data?
3. As Sky has been around for a few years now, there has been a natural staff/rider turnover. If you were a doping team, by now there would be whispers/rumours circulating (as with Armstrong). When employees leave Team Sky, what sort of confidentiality agreements do they have to sign?
4. If a rider/riders tested positive, what repercussions would there be from your sponsors? Are there contractual penalties written into riders’ contracts and the contract with Sky and other sponsors?
5. Philippe Maire, allegedly Motoman, claims that Chris and Richie were frequent clients of his bike shop in Cagnes-sur-Mer. Is this true? Why did they visit him? Were you aware of this? Maire claims that you told them to stop seeing him. Is that true? If yes, why would you have told them this?
6. Can you clarify Team Sky’s policy on needle usage? Are IVs or recuperative IVs ever used? Do the UCI ever check the hotels or team buses for this?
7. Do any of the Sky riders use tramadol? The MPCC urges non-use of tramadol. Is that one reason why Sky won’t join the MPCC?
8. Last year, when Sky’s riding style was criticised, it was explained that in a clean world, you wouldn’t see dramatic accelerations at the end of long stages. But that is what we are seeing now – and yet we are also told that, physiologically, Chris hasn’t changed dramatically since last year. Why is he able to ride in this way then?
9. One of the reasons the questions still remain is the zero-tolerance team clear-out last autumn is not convincing. Why did Sean Yates leave? Did you have any misgivings over his ethical stance or history? Dario Cioni failed a haematocrit test – was that covered in your questioning? Are you convinced he never doped? Likewise Servais Knaven, who was with TVM and T-Mobile at times of team doping crises?
We thanked him for his time and looked forward to hearing from him. Brailsford didn’t reply.
And the enduring collective value of the MPCC? Well, Brailsford’s misgivings on that score at least proved well founded. The MPCC’s resolve was tested in July 2015 when Astana’s Lars Boom tested positive for cortisol, two days before the 2015 Tour started. Under MPCC rules, Boom should have been withdrawn by his team, rested for eight days and thus not started the Tour. But, as the deadline for substitute riders had been passed, that would have left Astana a man short for team leader Vincenzo Nibali’s defence of his 2014 Tour title. Faced with the choice of undermining Nibali’s ambitions even before the race began, or exile from the MPCC, Astana didn’t hesitate for a moment. They turned their backs on the MPCC and Boom started the race.
Perhaps Team Sky should be flattered. As I said, people hold it to high standards: they expect less, much less, of Team Astana.
Midway through the 2015 Tour, I was tired from a long drive towards the Alps. After filing my copy, I went to bed early. About half past midnight, my phone rang, once, twice, each time with a bad signal. The third time, much clearer, there was a woman’s voice in my ear, shrill, high-pitched, angry. ‘Jeremy? This is Michelle Froome . . .’
A week earlier, unsolicited, she had started messaging me during that summer’s Tour, initially about her husband’s reluctance to wear the yellow jersey after race leader Tony Martin had crashed out, then regarding the bottle-throwing incident between Vincenzo Nibali and Froome on the same stage, sending me a very poor-quality image, in which a bottle-clutching arm is raised.
Now, however, with her husband a few days from overall victory, she was raging against the media, targeting my work and that of others, as well as some on Twitter and some working for rival teams. My story on Philippe Maire was the last straw. Now she said she couldn’t even bear to come near to the Tour, to visit her husband.
I tried to remain calm. ‘Then maybe you shouldn’t come, Michelle,’ I said. ‘Maybe it’s too toxic.’ That word again – the word that always best captured the Armstrong years and the mistrust and suspicion that hung in the air, constantly.
After what she had said about my own stories detailing why there was such scepticism towards Froome, I asked if her husband could clarify to me if he had in fact visited Maire for legitimate reasons. I suggested that, as she managed his press relations, she might facilitate me speaking to him the next morning. I knew this was unlikely, however, as the Froomes had already tried to enforce a copy-approval agreement on all interviews after his first Tour win. The next morning, when a voicemail landed, it wasn’t Froome, but a press officer from Team Sky. I called him back.
‘It’s about your piece,’ he said, referring to the story I’d written for The Times that week, setting out the French suspicions towards Froome. He wanted to take issue. He and I talked at length as I crawled through the traffic jams on the A7, south towards Lyon and on towards the stage finish in Valence. It wasn’t the first time I’d been cold-called by the team after a critical story had been published. Other senior figures within Team Sky had vented down the phone in the past.
But this conversation was less confrontational. I stood by what I’d said, pointing out that I had put both sides, that I’d made it clear that it was simplistic to compare Froome’s Ventoux ride in 2013 with Armstrong’s in 2000, but I also reaffirmed my view that Team Sky’s use of a TUE had been glib and contrary to their positioning of zero tolerance. I defended the mention of Froome’s visits to Philippe Maire’s bike shop, first detailed in The Times in July 2013.
‘Those visits were not suspicious!’ he said, while also acknowledging that the visits to Maire’s shop had taken place. He told me that, yes, they had occurred but they had been entirely innocent. I countered by saying that if they had taken place then there might a question of judgement to be addressed. ‘That story was first published two years ago,’ I said. ‘It’s been out there since then.’ And we’d sought clarification in 2013, I pointed out, recalling the email that we had sent Brailsford at the time requesting his version of events, that he had not replied to.
Given Maire’s close relationship with Yates – ‘my best friend’, the Frenchman had told us – it seemed quite likely that Yates, who has always denied any connections with doping, had recommended his French mechanic friend to his two team leaders. Asking questions about the exact nature of Froome and Porte’s relationship with Maire was both logical and legitimate.
When I got to Valence that lunchtime, the atmosphere in the pressroom was foul. I wasn’t the only journalist who’d been contacted by an angry Michelle Froome in the past 24 to 48 hours. Instead of answering essential questions, Team Sky had turned to attacking those who asked them. In the heat of battle, just when they needed to demonstrate them most, Team Sky had deserted their launch values, of accountability and transparency.
This was a depressingly familiar scenario from the Armstrong Era, the Tour de France as Groundhog Day. Too many of us had been here before, blacklisted, cold-called, bullied and manipulated, during the Armstrong years
. These were the ‘old’ ways; this was how the omertà worked.
The Ventoux video, the alleged hacking of detailed information, the supposed bias of some journalists, both for and against, the anger of the Froomes and Team Sky, the weary suspicion of the French and the knee-jerk retaliation of a chauvinistic British media, some of whom had not lived through the Lance Era, had fermented into a familiar atmosphere.
Two years after Armstrong’s confession, the air was toxic again.
‘The better we do, the more questions we get asked,’ Dave Brailsford says.
‘What we want to try and prove is that we can genuinely do this – we want to make unbelievable things believable,’ he reiterates. ‘But it’s such a challenge . . .’
Had Brailsford felt protective of Froome after the controversy over his victory on the Ventoux?
‘Yeah . . . I think I was. I felt it was unjust and I still feel it is unjust.
‘I was happy for him, for what he’d done. But then, pretty quick, you realise, “Jesus, he’s going to get hit pretty hard – he’s going to have to deal with all this shit.” That’s what got my back up.
‘If I thought he was doing something wrong, if I didn’t believe him, I wouldn’t be doing this. And I do believe him, one hundred per cent, and I do think he’s doing it the right way.
‘The idea that “this is not fair” whirls around inside your head. There’s a dynamic, oscillating all the time, between “Come on, you need to answer these questions, it’s the right thing to do” through to “This is bollocks”.
‘In the end it came back to the whole question of data again – that’s why the demand for numbers raised its head. Nothing was going to take away from the pleasure of the performance, and you’ve got to enjoy it otherwise why do it?’
French Renaissance Page 22