Mere posturing for PR purposes. Prudhomme knows his ban will not stand. The Froome situation has only arisen because of UCI corruption/incompetence (their leak to Le Monde and The Guardian), without which Froome’s AAF would be confidential as the UCI’s rules require. Is he now to be punished by ASO for a breach of his own privacy? Imagine how that would sit with WADA, whose rules via the UCI Froome has followed to arrive at this mess.
Lappartient and Prudhomme are cowards who should be standing up for the rule of law rather than kowtowing to ignorant public opinion in France and elsewhere. But they are self-serving cynics and now it seems in cahoots into the bargain. It’s they who have harmed the reputation of cycling.
This latest move makes me wonder if Prudhomme knows Froome will be cleared of wrongdoing by the UCI earlier than expected, before the Tour starts.
It's France's cultural heritage and ASO's property and ignorant and ill-informed public opinion is a part of that cultural heritage. That is what sells the rights, justifies the expense of the operation and even persuades the police and gendarmerie to sometimes forgo family holidays and overtime pay to make it work. That is what it is! Living in France you should understand at least part of that.
In the past ASO has been guilty of not paying enough attention to excluding riders whose presence has a detrimental effect on the image of their event. (They also own the Dakar and have equally been criticised for events downgrading the image of that event). It is not surprising that they are a bit sensitive over it. Froome, like Armstrong before him, has tended to take a position of being more important than the event, which is not going to help to persuade ASO that his presence actually brings added value to their event. The problem is that, doped or not, he has adopted the posture of a doper and that is not going to help his appeal to the public or the organisers.
there could have been a solution which would have been for Froome to decide to concentrate on getting the case cleared as soon as possible and declare that he wasn't competing until it was cleared. If he had done that his popular standing (at least on the continent) would have been considerably improved and some organisers would have been prepared to pay up more readily for his eventual presence. If you want to be considered great it helps to behave accordingly. It ain't happened which is why we are here.
Obviously I take the standpoint that a big part of the delay in settling the case is due to lawyers and team organisation deciding it might be in their interest (Froome is on a GT roll, lets make the most of it while it's there!)