Amaury Sport Organisation: Delusions of Grandeur

Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) has forced Alberto Contador into an impossible situation. Renege on your contract with Astana, find another cycling team or be excluded from defending your Tour de France title. An absurd proposition, demeaning, disgusting, revolting. Prudhomme should say simply this: Astana quit as a UCI Pro Tour cycling team sponsor and release your riders to more deserving teams. Betray your riders, your affiliates, your director sportif, your honor.

Astana has more integrity as an organization than ASO will ever have. Prudhomme must understand that Astana is not in a position to simply abandon people. Trek bicycles and Bontranger parts have invested millions of dollars in building specialty frames and in providing parts for Astana. Trek has invested money into research and development based upon new bicycle designs that need to be tested in Grand Tour races, refined, and then sold to the general public. Trek also needs exposure of its products to a large European and United States television market during the Tour de France. These commitments can not be abandoned at a whim because ASO insists that Astana surrender as a sponsor. ASO has finally descended into ego maniacal madness.

ASO Goal: Emerge As A Monopolistic Cycling Super Power

ASO has a goal to emerge as pre-eminent, supreme, qualified to include or preclude professional cycling teams from Grand Tours based upon "arbitrary and capricious" reasoning. After ASO has bought out Unipublic and destroyed the UCI Pro Tour, Prudhomme and Clerc fantasize that they will be adorned in papal regal purple. Like tyrants with absolute power and no oversight ASO will arrogantly treat cycling teams as supplicant petitioners. Teams will be required to vociferate absolute allegiance to the Tour de France. Applicants will be forced to sign pledges not to embarrass ASO. Team director sportifs will be required to kneel and kiss Prudhomme's signet ring. All professional cyclists will have to be issued special ASO racing licenses to compete. Team sponsorships will be issued or denied at the whim of ASO at any time regardless of rider or team commitments. ASO will develop a biological passport, AFLD will study test results for irregularities ensuring "independence" and "transparency." Politically incorrect riders will be disqualified for "positive" tests for performance enhancers, blood manipulations, or irregularities in ASO profile data. Confirmation testing will be done at WADA accredited lab Chatenay-Malabry. Forced confessions of intent to commit fraud on ASO and the Tour de France will immediately follow the leaked l'Equipe "scoop." Also, the riders' name will be removed from Tour de France history. It will be ugly.

Astana Should Not Be Excluded From The Tour de France

Astana has had problems. In 2006 Astana could not field a Tour team because several riders were involved in Operation Puerto. In 2007 Astana team leader Alexander Vinokurov tested positive for homologous blood doping and Astana withdrew from the Tour. Astana's history for the past two years has been a stellar example of how not to run a UCI Pro Tour cycling team. But Astana has changed personnel and has made a commitment to clean cycling that should be emulated by other cycling teams. Astana has hired Dr. Rasmus Damsgaard, a man who pioneered internal team anti-doping measures for CSC. Dr. Damsgaard seems to evoke the "no tolerance" principal in cycling and his commitment to "clean cycling" seems genuine. If I were Astana, I would love to have Dr. Rasmus Damsgaard run the anti-doping program on my cycling team.

The inclusion of Dr. Damsgaard signals a very serious anti-doping reform of Astana. Even better is the monetary commitment. Johan Bruyneel says, "we are spending 460,000 euros on internal anti-doping efforts for 2008. What more can we do?" May I make a suggestion Mr. Bruyneel? The Amgen Tour of California will do a great deal of blood and urine testing at great expense to establish baseline values for the UCI biological passport. Make sure your defending champion Levi Leipheimer passes these tests. Same goes for your other riders.

Mr.Prudhomme: Ponder This

Mr. Prudhomme should rush to the nearest microphone and apologize to the cycling community for suggesting that Alberto Contador renege on his contract, abandon his teammates, and cut and run to satisfy a fool who thinks he is Julius Caeser. This is not the sort of behavioral lesson that children who regard Contador as a hero and who want to emulate him should be taught. Next children will think it is okay to use performance enhancing substances. Anything goes, right? And where would Contador run to? Rabobank, Team High Road, Cofidis? Mr. Prudhomme if you exclude Rabobank, Team High Road, and Cofidis from the 2008 Tour for damage they have done to your race by past doping offenses, then what? Do you want to subject Mr. Contador to more humiliation? If you, Mr. Prudhomme, use the same criteria you used to exclude Astana for other team selections will you demonstrate to everyone that you are consistently stupid, or sadistic, or what? Will you, Mr. Prudhomme, staunch the rumor that you are nothing more than a prevaricating hypocrite? By the way Mr. Prudhomme, Andreas Kloden will stay with Astana and ignore your advice. Kloden would rather be a man with balls than ride in the Tour under your conditions. Levi Leipheimer will do the same. Tough.

A UCI Pro Tour Team Should Not Be Punished For The Sins Of Others

Prudhomme says if there are no anti-doping violations on team Astana this year ASO might consider an invite for 2009. That is not good enough. I would suggest that ASO abandon its delusional ideas of a European cycling monopoly which employs "arbitrary and capricious" rules and follow the sensible advice of UCI president Pat McQuaid. Invite all eighteen UCI Pro Tour teams to participate in the 2008 Tour de France. No need to punish innocent riders for the sins of others.

Giro d' Italia Dumps Astana, High Road, Credit Agricole

RCS have excluded UCI Pro Teams Astana, High Road and Credit Agricole to the 2008 Giro d' Italia. Out are American riders Levi Leipheimer, Chris Horner, and George Hincapie. Out is 2007 Tour de France winner Alberto Contador. RCS one day classics such as Milan-San Remo and Tirreno-Adriatico are out too.

Astana must have had a rude awakening after RCS, organizers of the Giro D' Italia, poured ice water on the mariachi party dancers in New Mexico where Levi Leipheimer and Johan Bruyneel toasted champagne glasses to a new Amgen Tour of California program of anti-doping measures. Public proclamations of enthusiasm for total blood testing of riders and urinary screens to be entered into the new UCI biological passport profile did not seem to impress Giro d' Italia director Amgelo Zomegnan. Zomegnan cited Astana as lacking "ethics, quality, internationality, and long term relationships with race oganizing company RCS."

Zomegnan also made some questionable speculative statements. Leipheimer, claimed Zomegnan, only wants to race the Giro d' Italia as a conditioning exercise for the Tour de France. An interesting notion since Astana has three possible Giro d' Italia/Tour de France double winners, Levi Leipheimer, Andreas Kloden, and Alberto Contador. Maybe Zomegnan has unknown psychic powers that allows him to know in advance what racing goals Astana has for this year.

Zomegnan also questions Astana as a team who has learned not to dope, probably recalling former Astana riders Alexandre Vinokourov and Andrey Kashechkin who both tested positive for blood manipulations in 2007. Vinokourov's positive forced Astana to withdraw during the 2007 Tour de France. La Vuelta a Espana also excluded Astana in 2007 probably fearing a second doping incident and besmirchment of a Grand Tour.

I could also add in a sarcastic tone to Astana woes: Former Discovery Channel director sportif and current director sportif of Astana, Johan Bruyneel, signed former Giro d' Italia winner Ivan Basso to Discovery Channel even though Basso was under suspicion in the Operation Puerto case at the time. Basso later admitted that his blood had been manipulated by Dr. Fuentes. Basso was banned for two years.

If you add former Tour de France winner and partial Tailwind Sport owner Lance Armstrong into the mix, conspiracy buffs will brew an explosive cauldron of sinister motives as to why Basso was signed by Bruyneel.

People might also question as to why Alberto Contador, who won the 2007 Tour de France while riding for Discovery Channel under director sportif Bruyneel is currently under suspicion by the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI). People may wonder why Contador has been invited to testify about documents allegedly linking him to Operation Puerto. If the Operation Puerto investigation persists Contador may be prevented from defending his 2007 Tour de France title.

Astana is not a good example of how to run a UCI Pro Tour cycling team.

UCI Pro Tour Versus Grand Tours: Tour de France, Giro d' Italia, and La Vuelta a Espana.

Hein Verbuggen, former President of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) originated a Pro Tour concept. The Pro Tour would have elite teams, points would be awarded in selected races, and a Pro Tour Champion would be crowned. The idea ran into almost immediate resistance from Grand Tour organizers. The issue was over control. Grand Tours have always had an option to invite or exclude cycling teams.

To be fair, Pat McQuaid inherited the UCI Pro Tour team concept from Verbuggen. McQuaid has tried to maintain the UCI Pro Tour. But opposition to the UCI Pro Tour has been as vociferous as ever with the Grand Tours demanding autonomy. The end of the UCI Pro Tour era will commence this year if an agreement is not reached on which cycling teams will be invited to the Tour de France. McQuaid is insisting that all eighteen UCI Pro Tour teams be invited, while Patrice Clerc and Christian Prudhomme of Amaury Sport Organisation have refused. Prudhomme and Clerc have objected to McQuaid's inclusion of all eighteen UCI Pro Tour teams because they do not want to face another Michael Rasmussen fiasco. Although the objection has some merit, it would be simpler to employ the Amgen Tour of California formula and merely exclude riders currently under anti-doping investigations before the start of the race. Unfortunately, if the UCI announced that Contador or other riders were to be excluded from the Tour de France because of an open doping investigation all hell would break loose. Perhaps even legal action might ensue. Draw backs of this approach should be considered, but they are slightly better than this drastic alternative.

If Prudhomme and Clerc were to announce today that Astana, High Road, and Credit Agricole were to be excluded from the Tour de France and classics such as Paris-Roubaix or Liege-Bastogne-Liege, as RCS has done, then the UCI Pro Tour would most likely end this year. Certainly, Astana, Credit Agricole, and High Road would disappear. Other Pro Tour teams would likely follow.

If ASO follows in the path of RCS and excludes Astana, High Road, and Credit Agricole from ASO organized events this year the following problems would instantly emerge. The career of classics rider George Hincapie would be adversely impacted. American rider Levi Leipheimer would be deprived from an opportunity to win the Tour de France. American riders George Hincapie and Chris Horner would be deprived from winning Tour stages. American cycling fanatics would be enraged. People in America want to root for their home boys they don't want to watch French Continental teams going off the back. It would be a very dangerous move.

Prudhomme and Clerc, think before you act. You may lose millions of dollars in revenue from the American Tour de France fanatics, whom you despise.