Maybe our new guest blogger will fill in the details of the late TdF news...I decided to quit checking Velonews every twenty minutes and instead went down to RFK so I could see a wholesome sport unsullied by drug...oh, never mind.
Ok, the latest is that the Astaná-Würth team won't ride, because by the time the riders who were implicated in the doping were pulled, the team was two riders short of the minimum six needed to start the race.
Astaná-Würth is a team that was actually hastily formed from Liberty Seguros when that sponsor pulled out following the arrest of the team director when this whole Spanish doping thing began in May. (This specific case, I mean, not doping itself.) The Astaná part of Astaná-Würth is a bunch of Kazakhs with money who agreed to take over sponsorship for team leader Alexander Vinokourov. (Vino is pretty popular in Kazakhstan.)
And speaking of Vinokourov, he wasn't one of the riders on the list. (It crossed my mind that if he'd stayed another year at T-Mobile, he'd be the team leader there now...but Vino staying at T-Mobile would have been alternative-universe territory. Everybody knew he was splitting during last year's Tour.) So in other words, Vino is really screwed.
One of the things that makes this story so intriguing for some of us, I think, is the complete lack of the presumption of innocence that we take for granted here in the U.S. In discussing this with my mom earlier today, she reminded me that French law goes the other way, and I have no idea how other European countries work. And of course, the UCI isn't a governmental body anyway. But this spur-of-the-moment punative action isn't something I remember in any other sports I follow.
Oh, and following other sports didn't do much to cheer me up, either: the Nats lost to the Devil Rays 11-1.
Anyway, the Tour starts tomorrow...presumably. (I well remember stage 17 of 1998...) I'm looking forward to a time trial, anybody else with me?
Posted by Nic at June 30, 2006 10:25 PM | TrackBack