Berlin - Chris Froome, who is the favourite to win this year's Tour de France, has told a British newspaper that he does not partake in doping.
Froome, who is the captain of Team Sky and finished second behind his team-mate Bradley Wiggins last year, said in an interview published late Saturday on the Daily Mail website that he knows that people do not believe the sport is clean.
The publication came on the same day as German 1997 Tour winner Jan Ullrich's admission that he was involved in blood doping.
"There is still a lot of scepticism and a lot of fans who have been let down. I sympathise with that. I'm one of those fans who was also let down."
The 28-year-old, who was born in Kenya and brought up in South Africa, said he believes he can show that the sport has changed. "I know how I work for the results I get and I know my results aren't going to be stripped in five, six, seven years' time."
He criticised those who said that all good results were dependent on doping. A former coach Antoine Vayer said recently that performances, like those of Froome and Wiggins, were suspicious.
"It's hard not to get angry over reports like that because it almost feels the better we do our job the more people think we're doping," he told the Daily Mail.