Team Sky say time-trial skinsuit is legal after criticism following Dusseldorf dominance
Sunday 2 July 2017 18:33, UK
Team Sky have dismissed suggestions that their dominance of Saturday's opening time trial in the Tour de France was down to an illegal skinsuit.
Team Sky riders made up four of the top eight on the 14km course around Dusseldorf, with Geraint Thomas taking the race leader's yellow jersey thanks to his first career Tour stage win.
Thomas won the time trial by five seconds from BMC's Stefan Kung, with team-mates Vasil Kiryienka, Chris Froome and Michal Kwiatkowski also in the top eight on sodden roads in Dusseldorf.
That led professor Frederic Grappe, performance director for the French FDJ team and a sports science expert, to claim after the stage that Sky's skinsuit had Vortex air bubbles woven into the fabric against UCI rules.
Grappe claimed the material could have been worth "18 to 25 seconds" for each rider.
"The rule is very clear. Any aerodynamic addition to the jersey is banned. Sky have clearly infringed," Grappe said.
But Team Sky's sports director Nicolas Portal said Grappe had got it wrong and Portal was also backed by race commissaires.
"We haven't cheated," he said. "Everything is legal and the equipment was validated by the race commission.
"We wouldn't have taken the risk of losing the Tour from the first stage by cheating. Other teams use this material, but we're the ones being attacked.
"We're not infringing the rules because the Vortex isn't added to the jersey, it's part of it - that's different."
Race jury president Philippe Marien cleared Team Sky, saying the suit did not infringe rules. "On the basis of the regulations, I did not have a legal reason to prohibit this equipment," he said in comments reported by L'Equipe.
