Team Sky has released Chris Froome's power data from the climb up to La Pierre-Saint-Martin last Tuesday "in an effort to debunk the speculation and innuendo that has been swirling around the maillot jaune for the last week," according to Tom Cary of the London TELEGRAPH. Team Sky also dismissed the "wildly wrong" estimates put out by host broadcaster France 2 on Sunday. Froome's performance in the first Pyrenean stage last week attracted "plenty" of skepticism, particularly from France 2 and its lead pundits Cedric Vasseur and Laurent Jalabert. Sky Team Principal Dave Brailsford walked into "something of an ambush" on Sunday, with France 2 showing him a video of a doctor of physiology, Pierre Sallet, analyzing Froome's climb and "coming up with a final power-to-weight ratio of 7.04 watts per kilo based on a weight of 71kg." Brailsford: "I have asked Tim [Kerrison, Sky's head of performance] to present a bit of data today to put to bed some of the numbers that they came up with, because they were wildly wrong. I do think in this day and age in the sport of cycling people do have to be responsible. If you are going to present something on television, to a nation, then you do have an obligation to get your facts right." Kerrison came up with a figure of 5.78 watts per kilo based on a weight of 67.5kg, but emphasized that there was "always a significant margin of error when trying to compute these numbers, given the abundance of variables" (TELEGRAPH, 7/21).
