Astana Officially Out of Tour de France

Astana was officially denied entrance to the Tour de France today. Somehow Johan Brunyeel is still confounded by this. If you read the history of the Tour and Astana it is hard to believe that Johan would go into this position thinking he had a chance to get into the Tour. The last two years for Astana and the remnants of Liberty Seguros in relation to the Tour have been complete failures with drug issues each time.

This brings me back to my commentary a couple days ago on drugs, cycling and baseball. Floyd Landis continues to fight, but where is the fight from Alexandre Vinokourov? Didn't he also claim innocence and that he would fight to restore confidence in his cleanliness? We haven't heard anything from him since July 2007. Obviously he got the clue that fighting would only mean more pain for him and that being reinstated was a lost cause. Homologous blood transfusions are definitely more complicated than testosterone doping, but why would that change his fighting position?