Tour de Irrele-France

The big headline today is that the ASO (the company that owns the Le Tour) has decided not to extend an invitation to theo 2008 tour to team Astana. In my opinion, this is just one more punchline in the comedy of errors that the sport of cycling has become.

In the cycling offseason, many changes happened with some teams folding, others starting up, and many strong riders choosing to change teams. What I think has resulted is a greater parity between teams across the board, but clearly, Astana came out quite well and have one of the strongest (The strongest?) teams. Their top 3 riders consist of last year's Tour winner (Contador), the 3rd place finisher (Leipheimer), and another who I think had the talent for a podium spot in Andreas Kloden.

For all these riders to be absent from all ASO events (most notably the Tour) and the Giro d'Italia will call the legitimacy of the winner of all those races into question.

Now don't get me wrong, I understand some of the motivation behind these decisions: the sport simply can't handle more scandal! But is this decision not a scandal in itself? The only commonality between this year's Astana & last years is that both teams had ugly outfits. Entirely new staff and riders have been brought in. If the current squad resembles anybody, it's the Discovery team! Nobody in the current squad is under investigation for any doping-related offenses. I've got no doubt that Cofidis has their invite in the mail already, and they have a worse record than nearly anbody!

The real source of all this scandal is that there is no unity or consistency within the sport. Every race has a different organizer, and the UCI's ProTour seems to have ended up being more of a divisor than the unifier it was supposed to be. What the sport truly needs is one governing body, and one union to look out for the interests of the riders (who must be starting to think getting the shaft is in their job description).

Almost as muich as it needs a scandal-free season, cycling needs to legitimize itself again, and having the world's top riders laying on the beach rather than racing isn't going to accomplish either.