"I'm trying to do something constructive, doing everything I can to help, and I found out just like that about one of my favourite riders, to whom I've given the benefit of the doubt, who I wanted to believe was doing it clean.
"You hate to think that way, because there are some who are doing it clean, and God love 'em if they do; it's fantastic.
As for "doing it clean", the core of that was a zero-tolerance policy on employing staff and riders with doping records.
In vain has Chris Froome's Team Sky – launched in 2009 in a blaze of commitments to winning the Tour and doing it "clean" – published previously top-secret performance data.
It is a far cry from the spring day in 2009 when Dave Brailsford – pre-knighthood – summoned the press to the Lanesborough hotel to announce his intention of winning the Tour with a British cyclist within five years, and of doing it "clean".
"Everybody has recalibrated and several teams like ourselves are hell-bent on doing it the right way and doing it clean," said Brailsford.
