The use of salbutamol is a real grey area. I worked in Respiratory for many years, and I remember one memorable visit to the British Olympic Medical Centre (as it was then) in Northwick Park Hospital. They were doing a seminar on asthma in athletes, and they quoted the figure of ~25% of the British olympic team using broncial medication.
At the time they were trialing a new system of diagnosis using a helium-based hyperventilation method (I'm sketchy on the details, I'm afraid) precisely because there was such difficulty in diagnosing the true asthmatics.
Normally, in clinical practice we use either a histamine or metacholine provocation test, to diagnose and grade bronchiohyperrestrictiveness (I think I just made that word up!). It's a pretty memorable test, for anyone who has undergone it and I'm surprised Froome would not have had this, or similar tests, via referral from team Sky. If they claim to be all about marginal gains, wouldn't having the full differential diagnosis on Froome's asthma be of greater relevance than making sure he has a nice soft pillow for sleeping on at night?
Maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe they HAVE done these tests and they have a full working system for Froome's asthma management in place - well if they have, is this not worthy of mention in his autobiography or at the very least in passing in interview etc.? Seems very strange and it's another instance of Sky's self-appointed 'scientific' method seemingly being at odds with their public actions/disclosure. He's asthmatic, that's very relevant for an athlete in his profession.
I have asthma. When I was rowing there were a couple of times when this affected my ergometer tests , now if I was writing the history of my athletic career (limited and of no public interest, I grant you) I would be sure and mention it as part of my story. Yet Froome hasn't.
His use of the inhaler during the stage, well I don't have a problem with that (although I would have thought it was banned, excuse my ignorance of WADA rules), but if part of his asthma management strategy was to use the inhaler 10 minutes pre-hard effort (which is perfectly reasonable from an efficacy point of view) would he not have done this before? Is there evidence that he's done this before?
2 + 2 is making 5 yet again with Froome/Sky. As for his partners #duh, #troll bit... well words fail me on that one. The questions re his alleged asthma were perfectly reasonable, and her attitude hinted at darker motives.