David Walsh also says WADA “sat on” research which showed Chris Froome was innocent of the salbutamol charge against him; a charge he has now been cleared of.
Having backed Team Sky, and especially Chris Froome, repeatedly in his columns, David Walsh has said his biggest regret was ever doubting Froome.
In his latest column in The Sunday Times, which he has penned from the World Cup in Russia, Walsh said he was now in no position to criticise those who continue to question Froome.
“I cannot blame those who voice their disapproval because knowing more about the man than they do, I doubted him. That was a judgment call I regret,” he says.
Walsh also outlines how interesting and genuine he finds Froome. They spent time together on holidays when they found “our respective villas” were just 500 metres apart in Portugal two years ago.
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News of the Bradley Wiggins TUEs was breaking at the time.
Walsh would go for a run with Froome in the morning.
“He is an interesting conversationalist and though we ran for an hour or more, it passed in a minute,” Walsh says.
When Froome joined them for dinner one night, he chatted away for hours to other guests who had been invited.
These were “middle aged” people who had no interest in cycling, Walsh says.
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“It was to them that he chatted for most of the evening. Goodness knows what they spoke about but it was animated and convivial,” Walsh writes of Froome.
“They thought him charming and interesting, and could hardly believe he’d won the Tour de France three times.”
Walsh has also said the World Anti Doping Agency had proof all along that Froome’s test result from the Vuelta, suggesting abnormally high levels of asthma drug salbutamol, was not reliable.
“It now turns out that through the period of the investigation (Wada) was sitting on a research study that proved athletes using salbutamol in a multi-stage cycle race had a high probability of exceeding the threshold while staying within the permissible number of puffs from their inhaler,” he said.
“Wada’s law on salbutamol is seriously flawed and will soon be changed.”
He added that Froome’s “most dangerous foes” were “those standing by the side of the road”.
David Walsh had previously set out the proposition of Froome taking too many puffs from his inhaler to control his coughing in a TV interview as being the reason for his test result on the Vuelta last September.
Walsh previously said Froome was ill around the time of stage 18 on the race.
But he wanted to do his TV interview and not look ill so may have overdone his inhaler, the journalist previously suggested.
Froome, Walsh said at the time, gave his now infamous urine sample just minutes after the interview
“That evening at the finish (of stage 18), wanting to show he was healthy, he took two or three puffs from his inhaler hoping he would cough less or not at all through the post-race interview,” Walsh wrote last December.
Froome was cleared just last week of any wrongdoing, with his team saying one urine sample is not a reliable indicator of salbutamol abuse.
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