Four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome (Great Britain) has lost a lot of time in his controversial season debut on the Andalusia round trip.
In the final of the 191.2 km long fourth leg from Seville to Alcala de los Gazules, the Sky rider in sight of the Salbutamol affair was stopped by a defect and crossed the finish line 1’20 “behind Belgian one-day winner Tim Wellens (Lotto-Soudal). Froome also dropped out of the top ten in the overall ranking.
Wellens prevailed on the final climb above cobblestone, ahead of the Spaniard Mikel Landa (Movistar 0:05 minutes back) and the Danish Jakob Fuglsang (Astana/0:12). The 26-year-old took over the red jersey of the overall leader of Froome’s team-mate Wout Poels (Netherlands), who dropped back to fourth place, before the final individual time trial on Sunday.
Froome had taken two doping tests during the round trip to Spain last September, in which the permitted value of the asthma drug salbutamol was doubled. Since then, the 32-year-old has maintained his innocence and spoke of “widespread misinformation”. According to media reports, the Anti-Doping-Tribunal of the UCI wants to initiate proceedings against Froome.