Chris Froome ongoing salbutamol case has been unfairly treated and his reputation will always be “tarnished”, says former world champion Lizzie Deignan.
“He hasn’t had a fair process because already people have made up their minds, unfortunately, and that is based on the not full story,” Deignan said.
“Unfortunately for Chris his reputation is tarnished and will be forever. Whether he’s innocent or not, it’s kind of irrelevant to some people at this stage. A leak in a legal process should never happen.
“A rider should be protected because inevitably there will be things that happen, grey areas that should be looked at logically, scientifically, and analysed in court. That’s an inevitable part of having asthma and taking an inhaler and I think unfortunately he hasn’t had a fair process.”
“It’s a very personal thing that is happening to him right now and that’s why I would reserve judgement on it until the courts have made up their mind.”
Deignan herself has had her own run in with authorities after missing a series of test and whereabouts requests which lead to her being provisionally suspended for 12 months.
“I felt really let down by UK Anti-Doping at the time that they didn’t publicly defend the fact I was tested within a day of both missed tests and obviously all my samples have proved negative. I’ve never doped,” said Deignan.
“All I needed was for them to say ‘We made a mistake, we’re an organisation that’s totally funded to do this job and we’ve made a mistake.’”
“They’re still so many times when I’m trying to update my whereabouts and the ADAMs system is down and I can’t upload my data, and yet if I make a filing error I am taken to court. Financially, it cost me a serious amount of money that not many athletes can afford and yet they haven’t taken ownership or apologised or anything. You’re still working with a system that isn’t good and I think that there is a long way to go to be more transparent themselves.”
