Across the Channel, the riders of Team Sky had become used to abuse – they were spat on, lashed out at and even forced to dodge the odd bottle of urine. After winning six out of the last seven editions of the Tour de France amid a series of (never proven) doping allegations, they won over few French fans.

But on home turf, Team Sky were usually guaranteed a warm reception – particularly at the Tour de Yorkshire, the brutal four-day stage race that grew out of 2014’s wildly successful Yorkshire Grand Départ.

Yet at the start line in Doncaster on Thursday, Chris Froome, the team’s star rider, was greeted by boos.

Dave Brailsford and Sir Jim Ratcliffe defend Team Ineos at Tour de Yorkshire Read more

The four-time Tour de France winner was trying to give an interview on stage while a small but vocal group of protesters shouted “Shame on you” and “Change your sponsor” while waving placards reading “Frack off Ineos, tha’s not welcome in Yorkshire” and “On your bike, Ineos”. They refused to shut up, despite being told to button it by fans keen for the race not to be overshadowed by the demonstration.

If Froome was ruffled, he didn’t show it. He and his teammates have held the party line since their team, already the best funded in the sport, was taken over by Ineos, a petrochemical company owned by Britain’s richest man, Jim Ratcliffe. The name Ineos would probably mean nothing to most Britons but it is a dirty word in many communities in Yorkshire after it bought up licences to frack for shale gas. Stage one of the Tour de Yorkshire went right by one of the sites between Campsall and Little Smeaton, seven miles north of Doncaster.

“We are really grateful to Ineos for coming in and saving the team,” said Froome’s colleague Chris Lawless before the race, after his boss, Dave Brailsford, was photobombed by a protester wearing a mask of Ratcliffe with devil horns.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sir Dave Brailsford with a protester wearing a mask of Jim Ratcliffe with devil horns. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer

Lawless, 23, a sprinter from Wigan, said he didn’t see any hypocrisy in being sponsored by Europe’s biggest producer of plastics – despite Team Sky last year riding around wearing shirts raising awareness of plastic pollution in the ocean. “We wouldn’t be able to live without plastic,” he shrugged, before adding: “I’m not too educated about it.”

He and his teammates rewarded Ratcliffe for his reported £40m annual investment by riding on the front of the peloton all day, ensuring maximum publicity on the live TV feed, which managed to miss many of the anti-fracking banners hung up along the route.

Watching the Team Ineos bus get surrounded by anti-fracking protesters before the race, British national cyclocross champion Tom Pidcock shook his head. “It’s not good for the sport, is it?” he said. Froome and the rest of his team would ignore it, he thought. “They’re used to blocking stuff out.”

Pidcock, a junior and under-23 world champion, rides for Team Wiggins Le Col, sponsored by former Team Sky rider Bradley Wiggins, and is much admired by Brailsford. Protests against Ineos, he said, could potentially deter him from joining the team. “It is definitely a factor isn’t it?” he said.

This was music to the ears of Dave Shaw, a Labour councillor in Doncaster, who six years ago founded Frack Free South Yorkshire. “We want the Tour de Yorkshire to see their presence as potentially damaging to their brand and for them not to invite Ineos back – and hopefully riders will jump ship. Then it would be like dominoes. It’s not good, psychologically, for the riders being stood on the podium and getting booed.”

The protesters misunderstand how the race works, said Peter Dodd, the commercial director of Welcome to Yorkshire, which organises the race along with ASO, the French firm behind the Tour de France: “We just put on the race. We don’t choose the teams or their sponsors.”

The UCI, cycling’s governing body, decides which teams can enter, said ASO’s Christian Prudhomme. Having watched various French protesters hijack the Tour de France, he appeared supremely unruffled about the anti-frackers targeting the Yorkshire race. “We organise live bike races, we are not in a stadium where it is closed,” he said, cheerfully.

Back outside the Ineos bus, Robert Spacey wheeled up in full Team Sky kit astride a £4,000 Pinarello, hoping for a glimpse of Froome. The 65-year-old, a member of Worksop Wheelers, said he was just glad the team had found a new sponsor. If they hadn’t got a backer they would have collapsed. It’s not a cheap job, this,” he said.

Dennis May, an anti-fracking campaigner and cycling fan, spent much of the morning shouting at the Ineos bus but said he felt sorry for the riders: “It’s a shame they are being used in this way by Jim Ratcliffe in order to legitimise his dirty business.”