PARIS. – Astana, the team of last year’s
winner Alberto Contador of Spain, will be barred from the 2008
Tour de France, Tour director Christian Prudhomme said on
Wednesday.
Astana will not be invited to any of the
events organized by Amaury Sport Organisation this year, among
them the Tour, Prudhomme said.
Contador joined the team, which has also
been ruled out of this year’s Giro d’Italia because of doping
scandals, in a two-year deal last October.
Astana changed its structure after the team
was forced to pull out of last year’s Tour in July when Kazakh
rider Alexander Vinokourov, who has since retired, tested
positive for blood doping.
"Astana has appointed a new leadership and
their manager Johan Bruyneel has asked us to trust them but we
can’t," Prudhomme said.
Astana took over from Liberty Seguros, a
team that was left out of the 2006 Tour after several of its
riders were barred from taking part in the race because of
their alleged implication in the doping investigation named
Operacion Puerto.
"We remember what happened in 2006," said
Prudhomme. "Then came 2007 with a new team who asked us to
trust them. We did that and paid dearly for it."
International Cycling Union (UCI) president
Pat McQuaid, who said last week that there was no reason for
organizers not to include Astana in the Tour, was not
surprised.
"However, it is a decision I cannot
understand," he said. "This team has done everything to bury
the past... I still hope there will be a solution and that
Astana will be at the start of the Tour in July."
Bruyneel said in a statement that the new
team should not be compared to last year’s disgraced one.
"Only the name of the sponsor remained. No
pressure was put on us, there was no demand for big wins. We
are spending 460,000 euros on internal anti-doping efforts for
2008," he said.
Contador said after finishing the fourth
stage of the Mallorca Challenge race that his aim had been to
defend his Tour crown.
"They’ve deprived me of that opportunity.
Astana should be in the Tour," he said. "The Tour is the race
I’ve always dreamed about, I’ve always fought for it and I
hope I’ll still be fighting for it in the future."
The 25-year-old Spaniard will now make the
Tour of Spain the focus of his season with Victor Cordero,
director of that race, saying the rider and his team would be
welcome.
"Contador deserves to be in all the races
and for me he is a model for the future but what his team did
in the past has led to this ban," Cordero said.
"The Vuelta excluded Astana last year when
they didn’t deserve our confidence, but that confidence has
been renewed and teams that don’t have any problems with
doping will be invited.
"Contador and Astana will be in the Vuelta
because of the sporting interest in them."
The ASO also organizes the Paris-Nice, a
stage race won by Contador last year, as well as prestigious
one-day races Paris-Roubaix, the Fleche Wallonne, Liege-Bastogne-Liege
and Paris-Tours.
ASO released on Wednesday the list of teams
invited to the Paris-Nice next month, featuring all the UCI
Pro-Tour teams with the exception of Astana.
Prudhomme said organizers had hesitated
about Rabobank, whose leader Dane Michael Rasmussen was
expelled from the 2007 Tour while in the lead because he had
lied about his training whereabouts. Rasmussen was immediately
sacked by his team.
