Astana News

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What is what is happening with the cycling world’s proverbial hot potato team, your favorite and mine, the Terrors of Kazakstan, the Dopest of the Dopers, the Infamous Astana you ask?

I’ll tell ya in three words: Leipheimer and Trek. As in Leipheimer will ride for them and Trek’s going to supply the bikes.

American Levi Leipheimer is the next in a long line of Discovery Channel outcasts to have found a position for next season, the Deseret Morning News reported. In an interview with the Utah newspaper, Leipheimer hinted that he’d found a team, saying, “We just can’t say anything yet, but I’m not really on the market anymore.”

The newspaper quoted Leipheimer’s coach, Dr. Max Testa, as confirming that the third place finisher of this year’s Tour de France will accompany Johan Bruyneel and Alberto Contador for the 2008 season. “They just need to make sure everything is just right before they make it official,” said Testa.

Source: cyclingnews.com

Without naming names, I have it on good authority they’ll be riding Treks next year.

I simply cannot believe Trek is going to associate themselves with one of the biggest trainwreck teams on the planet. And yet, I have been assured that it will happen.

How many Astana riders have been implicated in drug scandals recently? I count ten with Puerto alone:

  • Joseba Beloki
  • Alberto Contador
  • David Etxebarría
  • Jörg Jaksche
  • Isidro Nozal
  • Unai Osa
  • Sérgio Paulinho
  • Michele Scarponi
  • Marcos Serrano
  • Ángel Vicioso

I realize all these riders are no longer on the squad, maybe even none of them, but who else do they have? Did they completely replace every last man? Even the mechanics and soigneurs?
Are these guys going to able to toe the start line next year? Will the team be un-invited to events? Will the riders be barred from racing?

I don’t know if Bruyneel even considers such things after his brilliant signing of Ivan Basso. We all know how well that worked out.

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The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

19 Replies to “Astana News”

  1. Betting the entire farm on Bruyneel’s magic touch in finding the latest doping technology to win and go undetected?

    Clearly part one of the strategy is to sign riders with such a clear doping tie-in that they’ll all be Sgt. Schultz’s about the whole “program”.

    I don’t know … I think that trains wheels are coming off.

    I’ll bet you an ampule of EPO to a testosterone patch that this house of syringes is no longer stackable.

  2. and somehow Contador was allowed to ride in and win the Tour…

    Professional cycling is that trainwreck I can’t look aways from…

    el jefe

  3. OK, hold on a minute..
    Excuse me for being late, but I just tuned in.
    Can we go back to the Reskin?
    What the..? Moleskin for your sack?? Jesus Christ. Should be on the shelf next to that pussy perfume.
    I assume this is being marketed under the presumption that their (male) customers are just young enough, and crazy enough to be shaving their taints in the first place. Mind you, I have nothing against body modification/grooming of any kind. But what about the rest of us? I would just assume wax my ass with a strip of duct tape!

  4. you wrote: I simply cannot believe Trek is going to associate themselves with one of the biggest trainwreck teams on the planet. And yet, I have been assured that it will happen.

    Remember, Trek made their $ off of Lance, and Trek leveraged Lemond, whos bikes they manufature, to quiet down about Lance when that was hitting the fan…..to the point that Lemond endorsed a public apology written by the Lance team. It would seem that Trek is no stranger to the party.

  5. Mr O’Grady said it best a few months back when he said that euro-pro cycling is not a sporting event, but a rolling crime-scene… The million-pound shit hammer is falling on pro cycling, and it’s way over-due… The doping controls need to be even tighter and the penalties need to be severe- two-year bans are not enough-lifetime seems about right- to the point where former cheaters are not allowed anywhere near the sport, as riders,coaches, or even as janitors…
    Cycling is a beautiful sport and should be restored to being a test of grit and determination, not medication.

  6. So, I don’t think Levi’s ever been caught up in any of this shit. I dont think it’s possible to ride clean at that level and beat the dopers as he’s done this year a few times.
    I gotta say “innocent till proven pro”…

    But his wife’s f’n hot… I pulled in behind her in a paceline. Shit Odessa, you look good!
    Too bad she toook that TdF paycheck to Rodeo drive and got all LA on that shit. Walking around in Stunnahs and f me pumps, looking like Paris Hilton.
    damns biddy.

  7. cycling is not a beautiful sport…it’s a beautiful recreational activity. Bike racing is a beautiful sport, NOT!…but it seemed like it was – then we found out what it really was, just like technology will show us what everything else is….(see story on “steroids”)—soon we will be able to replace “steroids” in the last sentence with anything as we stand naked before the machine.
    Anyway – bike racing ain’t no sober stroll. It’s about winning races. Yeah, the cavemen used to eat cat poison and drink vodka to get through the miles, and nobody knew or had the means to tell, and it didn’t make that much of a diff. Then people started to spend time on their mixes instead of just shoving a bottle of draino in your pocket on the way out the door.
    Bike racers party.
    We may eventually get a new bike race, but it will be diff than the one that we thought we loved.

  8. don’t forget kascheskin and vinokorouv.
    they deserve Trek. and Trek deserves them.