(AFP) – Four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome should be suspended by Team Sky over an adverse drug test, according to world cycling chief David Lappartient.

"Sky should suspend Froome. Now, it's not up to me to interfere," Frenchman Lappartient, the International Cycling Union (UCI) president, told French regional newspaper Le Telegramme.

"Without wishing to comment on the rider's guilt, it would be easier for everyone (was Sky to suspend him).

"It's up to (Sky team manager Dave) Brailsford to take his responsibilities.

"Quite apart from that, I think that's what the other riders want."

"They're fed up with the general image."

Lappartient said that regardless of Froome's innocence or guilt until he is either exonerated or found to have broken the rules, fans will not give him the benefit of the doubt.

"Whether the test result is abnormal or not, either naturally or fraudulently, it's awful: in the eyes of the wider public he's already guilty," said the UCI chief, who claimed he found out about the test result an hour after being elected to his post over Briton Brian Cookson on September 21.

"We're in the hands of the experts. It's up to Froome to demonstrate the reasons for such a high level of salbutamol, it's up to him to prove his innocence."

Regardless, Lappartient believes the affair will last a long time with the possibility of Froome appealing any eventual sanction to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

"It's going to be a judicial battle that will last a long time.

"This affair won't be sorted out in two minutes, it could last at least a year."

Some of Froome's main rivals have hit out at cycling authorities for failing to ban the reigning Tour and Vuelta a Espana champion, who tested for
elevated levels of the asthma medication salbutamol during his victory in Spain's Grand Tour last September.