Contador doesn’t expect Tour retreat
By Andrew Hood
Posted Mar. 6, 2008

Tour de France champion Alberto Contador isn’t exactly holding his breath expecting Tour organizers to change their minds on its controversial decision to exclude his Astana team from cycling’s marquee race.

“It seems unlikely, even though I am receiving the support from everyone, from the other riders and from the public,” Contador told the Spanish sports daily MARCA. “Being optimistic, I see 0.5 percent of the possibilities that the Tour would reconsider its posture.”

Last month, Tour organizers shocked the cycling community by excluding the scandal-tinged Astana team from any of the races it organizers. Racing this week in the Vuelta a Murcia — where he has chances to take the overall title if he can do well in Friday’s decisive climbing time trial — Contador insists he’s moved on.

“I swear that I don’t think about,” he continued. “To the contrary, I think that the best races are the ones where I am, like now at the Vuelta a Murcia. I imagine the closer I get to the dates, it will be harder, but right now, with the exception of Paris-Nice, which I switched for Murcia, I am going to keep the same objectives.”

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What's to stop these guys from forming a new team or joining an existing one? Sponsorship I guess?

Actually other than the fact that individuals are being prejudiced by Astana's banning I think it's a good lesson to the dopers. I mean really does one want to end up with a "non-dopers tour" and a "dopers tour" or a "free for all enhanced Olympics" and "drug free Olympics" for that matter?

Trouble is, Astana made the huge sacrifice of firing all of their cyclists and staff who were involved in the doping, and have invested in a huge internal anti-doping programme --- I mean it's practically an entirely new team --- and their "reward" for these efforts is to be banned from the Tour...

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Not to mention that all teams have now become vulnerable to any rogue cyclist who might resort to doping...

Astana is not the same team it was last year, it is basically a completely new squad. Its actually the old Discovery team, right up to the manager, John Bruyneel, Alberto, Levi and dam near the rest of Disco. That is what the big issue is, the team did take the initiative and fired nearly everyone from last year.
The thing that makes it a double standard is that there were several 'french' teams who had far worse offenders caught red handed, who are allowed to come back, but because Astana is a team from kazazstan (sp). they came down on them. And them only. Its quite possible that the fact that it is the Disco squad that my have caused the ban, because Disco has ruled the Tour for nearly 8 or 9 years (seven under Lance, and then last year, there was poor Landis in there, but he was riding for Phonak.

EDIT- The exclusion of Astana is what pushed McQuaid to threaten the ASO for not inviting them, and is a big factor in way there is this great 'battle' going on right now between UCI and ASO. The UCI thinks that All PRO Tour teams should be invited, and I kind of agree, the french want to be able to say who can, and can not race in their races. MHO you want PRO tour status, you should have to follow international rules to keep it fair across the board..

EDIT- its funny even at the Astana web site, you can see it, there are some video of the team training, most of them are wearing a mix of Astana and Disco kits, many of them still riding their Disco bikes (but they also carried Trek) as a sponsor with them too, so the new bikes will be the same (well newer) but the same models same company as Disco rode.
And Trek of course has Astana over their web site too.