Astana, the internal war

Now we're in full Tour de France Astana hear the name everywhere, in open warfare between Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador of the team is trying to hide. And the thing is a bit complicated.

How, as seven-time Tour winner can afford to run for another? How, having won all three Grand Tours (Giro, Vuelta and Tour) in two years, at age 26, you can stay back and not have the ambition to win another Tour de France?

For these are the two questions that do not seem to have simultaneous nice response. The first is Lance Armstrong, top winner of the Tour de France over its entire history, at 37, is back for the privileges Gauls to try to reach the eighth crown. And the other is Alberto Conte r, the Spanish star, who last year was unable to defend his throne in Paris because of the doping scandals of previous years of Astana.

And in the center of everything Bruynell Johann, director of Astana and before the Discovery Channel team with which Armstrong won his seven titles and whom Alberto Contador won the Tour de France. It is he who must send to each runner, but of course, at this stage of life outweighs the ambition of a game as beautiful as the bike that orders the team manager.

In the early stages, Armstrong got into a cut that hurt Contador. The Spanish complained in the media silence and echoed. In the first mountain, Alberto Contador and Armstrong attacked in their search did not turn out, later claiming that the attack was not part of the team strategy. Who does not want to see a fight between two portents is that your eyes are closed.

And all this after the Astana seemed that all was quiet in previous scandals, angry fruit of Alexander Vinokourov, who cast evil of Manolo Saiz when he could not run in the Operation Puerto doping and it turned out next year. The Astana, based in Kazakhstan, is a fairly new team could not race in 2007 Tour de France for having been punished for doping in their previous two years.

The final victory of this team should go, but after seeing how badly behaved all riders in the Pyrenees (the only big stage of the Tour organization gave to the mountains), we could assume that this tour can be quite boring. Hopefully not the case and in the Alps can enjoy an open battle, even within the team Astana.

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