When the news broke about Chris Froome’s failed test were any of you really shocked?
I know I wasn’t. Disappointed, yes, but not surprised.
Unfortunately, cycling is a sport that had already been tainted in the eyes of most of us and the same goes for Team Sky.
What a fall it has been.
If you just look at this incident on its own, how on earth does a cyclist whose career has been built on getting the smallest details right produce a test reading that was double the allowed limit for an asthma drug? Double!
This is a guy who has probably taken medication every day for years.
And if his asthma was getting so bad during a race that he needed to go over his usual dosage by so much, why did he not just pull out?
If any athletes should be erring on the side of caution it should be cyclists.
And Team Sky must have goodness knows how many backroom team members who could have stepped in.
I don’t think that Froome was going to win the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year awards on Sunday anyway, but it will be interesting to see how far down the voting he goes.
Cycling has had far too many of these stories for anybody to be given the benefit of the doubt unfortunately.
* I must admit, I find it hard to get my head round athletes landing themselves in hot water during nights out when they’re abroad.
Things seemed to be going off left, right and centre with the England rugby boys at a World Cup in New Zealand a few years ago and now it’s the English cricketers making headlines for carry-on in the Australian pubs.
We never misbehave when we’re away, of course!
Seriously, though, I do think you have a responsibility to behave properly and to put across the right image.
Maybe the amount of money you get dilutes the responsibility you feel but I always have in the back of my mind that the funding we get comes from the National Lottery, and it is the public who pay for that.
I also think you need to have a certain amount of self-respect and basically, common sense.
Discipline does come from the top, and management can have an important role to play in that, but a grown adult shouldn’t really need to be told how to behave when they’re representing their country.
* I gather there was plenty of airport chaos that we managed to avoid on our way to Japan. It’s not often we’re the ones who get lucky with delays and cancelled flights, I can tell you!
We’re competing in the Karuizawa International and the ladies section is pretty strong. The top two Swiss teams are here, as are Hasselborg from Sweden and Sidorova of Russia.
For this event we have to enjoy our time away and have some fun. On the back of the Europeans , this certainly isn’t the most important week on the calendar. Christmas isn’t far away so some good family time and recovery will be just as important.
We’ll have a training camp between Christmas and new year and then hit the ground running again at the start of January.
