Froome reveals missed dope test
Print Edition
FORMER Tour de France champion Chris Froome has revealed he missed a drugs test earlier this year but blamed over-zealous hotel staff for the mishap.
“I had a couple of recovery days and I took my wife down to quite an exclusive hotel in Italy,” the 2013 Tour champion was quoted as saying in British media.
“On the first morning the authorities pitched up at seven and the hotel staff actually wouldn’t give them access to our room and also refused to let them call up.”
Riders must provide their whereabouts at all times to the authorities so they can be tested out of competition.
Three missed tests over a rolling 12-month period result in a ban.
“So when we came down for breakfast at 8.30, they basically just said to us: ‘OK, the anti-doping guys were here to test you this morning but it’s our hotel policy not to let them disturb our clients or let anyone disturb our clients’,” Froome explained. “So that was a hugely frustrating situation for me.”
Froome said he should have anticipated a potential test.
“I should have been more proactive in letting the hotel know this was a possibility that I could be tested. I’ve certainly learned my lesson there,” he said.
Briton Froome is one of the favorites for this year’s Tour, which starts in Utrecht, Netherlands, on July 4.
Tour organizers, meanwhile, have changed the route of the 20th stage of this year’s race following a landslide in the French Alps.
At 110.5-kilometers, the length of the Alpine stage between Modane and l’Alpe d’Huez remains unchanged, but the famed Col du Galibier is no longer part of the race program.
Organizers said in a statement that following “the closure of the Chambon tunnel because of a landslide in April,” traffic in the area won’t be restored before the passage of the peloton on July 25.
Missed doping tests are a hot topic in the Britain at the moment after distance runner Mo Farah admitted to missing two in the build up to the 2012 Olympics, where he won two gold medals.
His American coach Alberto Salazar is being investigated by the US Anti-Doping Agency to determine if anti-doping rules may have been violated.
The probe has been ongoing and began before the BBC television program Panorama in association with American website ProPublica made a series of allegations, a source said.
The allegations included that Salazar had given Olympic 10,000 meters silver medalist Galen Rupp the banned anabolic steroid testosterone.
Rupp is the training partner of Farah, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
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