"Whoever was king post-Lance Armstrong was going to get destroyed" - Chris Froome's former teammate addresses allegations

The Grand Tours of the 2010s were dominated by Team Sky, with Chris Froome leading the team's charge, winning four Tours de France, two Vuelta a Espanas and a Giro d'Italia. During this run of success though, Froome and Team Sky received a somewhat hostile reception from fans at times.

One of those men who supported Froome throughout the 2010s was Team Sky's - and later the INEOS Grenadiers' - trusty road captain, Luke Rowe. In an extensive interview with The Guardian, the Welshman reflected on the abuse his team received during their pomp. "Froomey’s successes came off the back of a very suspect sport, off the back of the Lance Armstrong thing, and the whole sport collapsed for a while," Rowe recalls. "Shortly afterwards Froomey was king of the sport. Whoever was king post-Lance Armstrong was going to get destroyed."

"We had some hate off certain people throughout our time at Sky because we were the best," continues Rowe's analysis of the situation. "Now, INEOS is not the best, I don’t think anyone suspects anything."

Curiously however, Rowe doesn't believe the peloton's leading star since Froome has received the same kind of hate his team leader was the victim of. "Why doesn’t Tadej Pogacar have so much hate?" Rowe asks. "I think it’s because the sport is in the best state it’s ever been in. And I think this is largely down to the inclusion of the biological passport. It really has cleaned up the sport. I think it’s a very hard system to defeat or lie when you’re getting all your results continually plotted on a graph, and you can test positive just for an anomaly."

"When was the last rider who got caught or went positive in cycling? I can’t think of one in the past few years. When I started my career, every month there would be someone," Rowe adds. "The sport’s in a good place. Riders and teams can say it, but the proof is in the pudding."

Whilst Froome came under scrutiny for doping allegations, there was also wider criticism of Team Sky tactics. "It’s quite a harsh criticism because what we did was quite new. No team before or since managed to dictate a race the way we did," Rowe counters. "I think to have that strength in depth, that organisation, that belief in your teammates, that chemistry in the team was quite special and unique. I think there was some beauty in what we did."

"Was it particularly exciting to watch? No. Did it put a stranglehold on the race and stop a certain level of flamboyance and panache? It did. Guys were afraid to attack," he admits however. "We had the strongest leader, the strongest team, and were the most organised. We were hard to beat."

And as for the always controversial Armstrong, Rowe takes a measured approach to the subject. "He ruined the sport, he cheated, he broke people’s hearts. I was gutted when I saw the news: I was a Jan Ullrich fan but I still loved Lance, and what he did was unforgivable," the Welshman assesses. "At the same time, and maybe this is me being a bit soft, he made hundreds of millions for charity. He went through cancer and still achieved greatness, despite taking drugs [PEDs]. Every single person in the world has been affected by cancer at some point, and he did a lot of good for that, so there’s two sides to it."