Bobby Julich has dismissed as “idiotic” the references to Chris Froome at the fitness to practice hearing into Dr Richard Freeman at the General Medical Council in the UK at present.
During the tribunal into the fitness to practice of Freeman, a former Team Sky doctor, Freeman’s lawyer Mary O’Rourke QC read sections of a report compiled by Team Sky back in 2012.
At that stage the team was asking its staff to sign a
declaration they had never had any involvement in doping. Sutton, who was a
senior person on the coaching and management side at the team, was interviewed
and denied he ever had any connection to doping.
When asked if he had any other concerns about anyone else in the team he made a reference to “Chris Froome going to Italy on a motorbike” and also mentioned the rider’s relationship with Bobby Julich.
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Former US pro Julich was a top TT rider in his day and
Froome consulted him on the TT discipline and for coaching. Julich worked for
Team Sky but left in 2012 after he admitted he had doped during some of his
career.
There was no suggestion before the tribunal this week
that Froome had doped and Sutton’s references to him to 2012 that emerged at
the tribunal were not an allegation of doping.
Nonetheless, Froome’s name was dragged into the hearing
through the focus on the 2012 report by Team Sky, now Ineos Grenadiers. The
report was supplied by the team to the medical council after a request from the
council.
However, Julich has now rubbished the suggestion that
there was anything to be concerned about at the time about Froome.
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He said he was Froome’s coach for two years at Team Sky
and that there was a very innocent explanation for Froome traveling between Italy
and Monaco on a motorbike, saying he had notes from the time and has now
checked them.
“It was early 2011 and Chris
was this young rider living in Italy. I was based in Monaco and was working
with Richie Porte down there,” Julich told journalist Matt Lawton of The Times
of London.
“Sky had asked me to keep an
eye on this kid, even though they weren’t sure he was going to get a new
contract at the end of the season.
“Then Chris suddenly
contacts me to say he’s selling everything he has to move to Monaco to work
with me. From my notes it looks like it would have been late January.
“I was like, ‘wow, he’s not
being paid much and he’ll have to live in a box’. But he was that committed.
Anyway, what I think was April, he shipped the
stuff he had in a truck and then rode this motorbike — it was like an off-road
bike he couldn’t really use on the highway — to Monaco along all the coastal
roads.
“That bike was his prized
possession but the first thing I did was make him get rid of it. I don’t think
he ever rode it again.”
Julich also says he felt “let
down” at the time by Freeman saying that the team only resolved Froome’s bilharzias
- a tropical disease impacting his performance – because he (Julich) took such
a keen interest in Froome.
“One day Chris’s numbers could be as good, if not better,
than Brad’s. The next he could barely scratch himself,” Julich said of Froome
being as good as Bradley Wiggins at the time but being wiped out frequently
because of the condition he had at the time.
“I got him to see specialists to sort out the problem,
and once we got him straight I told them to pick him for the Vuelta in 2011,
because they weren’t planning to,” he added of the 2011 Vuelta which Froome was
2nd in (since upgraded to 1st) and one placing ahead of Wiggins, though he had
only broken his collarbone weeks earlier.
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