Pat McQuaid said Team Sky and Chris Froome were informed of the dope test finding at the Vuelta just before Brian Cookson left his post as UCI president in September.
Pat McQuaid critical of Chris Froome, Team Sky, Brian Cookson
Former UCI president Pat McQuaid believes Chris Froome will be banned from racing for a period. The Irishman said it would be very hard to escape such an outcome.
And he was also highly critical of Brian Cookson and Team Sky.
McQuaid said Team Sky had set out to prove it could win clean and restore the credibility of cycling. But the squad had instead damaged the sport of late.
He also found it strange that Brian Cookson would have known about Froome’s adverse salbutamol finding when he recently called for Team Sky’s reputation to be restored.
While Froome claims he has not broken any rules, McQuaid believed he had.
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"The fact is, he has broken a rule,” he said in a BBC interview.
"The fact is his urine sample was twice the permitted limit. It's up to him to go and prove that he could have done otherwise."
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McQuaid also pointed out that Team Sky was informed of the adverse test finding from the Vuelta the day before Cookson was deposed as UCI president.
“If a result comes through from the laboratory that a big, big rider has provided an adverse analytical sample then the president is involved, so he would have been aware," he said of Cookson.
"It really surprised me what Brian said about Sky getting their credibility back when all the time he knew that this thing was going on in the background," McQuaid added.
"How Brian, knowing all of those facts, could turn around and say; 'You need to hand their credibility back to Team Sky'. I just don't understand it; it's beyond me."
He was similarly critical of Team Sky, which has been hit hard by a UKAD inquiry into a jiffy bag delivered to it in 2011 and also details of Bradley Wiggins’ TUEs emerging publicly.
No doping violation has been detected and no rules were found to have been broken. But the team has still been very badly damaged.
"They've had a very difficult 15 months,” McQuaid said of embattled Team Sky.
“They set out to be the team that is the clean team that was going to bring back the credibility of cycling. And they certainly have gone in the opposite direction this year.
"They haven't achieved what they set out to achieve. They are a team with by far the biggest budget in cycling.
“And they can afford all of the experts and all of the medical back-up and all of the things that a lot of teams can't afford. And they find themselves in this situation today.
"It's going to be very difficult to see how they can come out of this with any credibility at all to be honest with you. It begs a lot of questions."
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