I have seen the report in Corriere della Serra this morning - it%u2019s completely untrue. — Chris Froome (@chrisfroome) January 30, 2018

Chris Froome (Team Sky) has denied he is willing to accept a six month 'Acceptance of Consequences' sanction for his adverse analytical finding (AAF) of salbutamol on the advice of his wife Michelle.

According to reports in Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra, on the advice of his wife and manager Michelle, Froome was considering accepting a six-month sanction with a plea bargain of negligence in order to avoid the case reaching an independent anti-doping trial.

However posting to his Twitter page, Froome called the report 'completely untrue', denying that the acceptance of a sanction was being considered.

The report stated that Michelle Froome would hire a 'mediator' in order to broker a deal between Froome and the UCI.

In doing so, it is alleged that Froome would have been going over the heads of Team Sky and recently hired lawyer Mike Morgan, by accepting a back-dated ban that would subsequently have seen the rider stripped of both his Vuelta a Espana title and World Championships TT bronze medal.

With a six-month ban, however, Froome would be free to return before the Giro d'Italia, allowing the rider to attempt his Giro-Tour de France double.

That was working on the assumption that Froome would even have been able to bargain a six-month sanction. Diego Ulissi's 'Acceptance of Negligence' for salbutamol in 2014 landed him with a nine-month suspension.

It is believed that Team Sky would rather Froome not accept this sanction and instead explore other methods of overturning the AAF, but if the rider was to fail in overturning the findings he could be subject to a 12-24 month ban.

With Froome denying that the acceptance of a sanction was a potential option, it is becoming more likely that the rider and his team will argue against the findings.

Rumours previously suggested that Team Sky and Froome would explore the possibility of Froome's high salbutamol levels being attributed to an abnormal kidney malfunction that failed to excrete the salbutamol regularly.

Froome returned an adverse analytical finding for salbutamol on Stage 17 of the 2017 Vuelta a Espana, returning 2,000ng/ml of salbutamol. The limit is 1,000ng/ml.

Cyclist has contacted Micheel Froome for comment and are waiting for a response. This article has been updated from the original following Froome's tweet, above.

