Chris Froome and I hung out to dry in doping cases, says Lizzie Deignan

Lizzie Deignan has claimed Chris Froome has been denied a fair process in his anti-doping case and criticised the testing authorities for not doing more to protect her reputation after three whereabouts failings.

Deignan, known as Armitstead until she married Team Sky rider Philip Deignan in 2016, said Froome’s name had been unfairly tarnished. The Guardian and the French newspaper Le Monde made public the fact Froome had returned an adverse finding to a urine test submitted during his Vuelta a España victory last September.

Froome is fighting the finding and has continued to compete, winning the Giro d’Italia and stating his intention to compete in the Tour de France next month. Other riders, both active and retired, have said he should remain on the sidelines until the case is resolved.

“He hasn’t had a fair process because already people have made up their minds unfortunately, and that is not based on the full story,” Deignan said. “Unfortunately for Chris his reputation is tarnished and will be for ever. Whether he’s innocent or not, it’s kind of irrelevant to some people at this stage. A leak in a legal process should never happen.”

Froome’s failed test indicated twice the permitted level of the asthma drug salbutamol in his system. The 33‑year‑old insisted he had not taken more than the allowed amount of the drug, which is a specified substance.

“A rider should be protected because inevitably there will be things that happen, grey areas that should be looked at logically, scientifically, and analysed in court,” Deignan told the When Orla Met podcast. “That’s an inevitable part of having asthma and taking an inhaler and I think unfortunately he hasn’t had a fair process. It’s a very personal story.”

Deignan escaped a ban in 2016 after three whereabouts failings in a 12-month period. The court of arbitration for sport accepted that in the first occurrence a doping control officer had not tried hard enough to locate the Olympic silver medallist when she was at a hotel for a training camp in Sweden.

However, Deignan is still disappointed in the UK Anti-Doping Agency. “I felt really let down by UK Anti-Doping at the time that they didn’t publicly defend the fact I was tested within a day of both missed tests and obviously all my samples have proved negative. I’ve never doped.

“All I needed was for them to say ‘We made a mistake, we’re an organisation that’s totally funded to do this job and we’ve made a mistake.’ They haven’t taken ownership or apologised or anything. You’re still working with a system that is not even good. I think there’s still a long way to go for them to be transparent themselves.”