The article makes a very nice bit of sleight of hand there.
Very good. The problem is:
- people were saying Froome's success was down to PEDs long before her comments, and will be saying it long after her comments are forgotten
- her comments DID result in a series of slurs from "twisted trolls", but let's be clear, the claims that Froome is doping are NOT the comments of twisted trolls, but the comments of sceptics.
- the comments worthy of the description of coming from "twisted trolls" are the threats of death and of rape. If they are meant in jest, then these people have a terrible sense of what is funny and acceptable in humour. If they are meant with any seriousness, people need to get a grip and/or seen to.
- although clearly the people who were making the threats of death and/or rape do doubt Froome, otherwise why would they have been attacking Michelle Cound on twitter, but that also does not excuse a newspaper, no matter how poor, painting all of the people who don't believe Froome is the all-singing all-dancing superhero they'd like to paint him as, as being the same kind of people who would threaten a woman with rape because they disagree with them, isn't really acceptable either - just less obviously unacceptable than the abuse Michelle has been facing.
Sure, she sometimes needs to get a grip, calm down and step back from the keyboard as much as many of the most argumentative types here. But there are plenty of legitimate reasons to doubt Chris Froome and plenty of legitimate ways to express that - and many of us both here and elsewhere have done so - without recourse to the kind of abuse that Michelle has taken on this. And I resent it being implied that because I also doubt Chris Froome that I am among those who have been attacking her in such a manner.