Recent content by journalguy

Were there other ProTour teams, besides Astana, that didn't meet their payrolls in a timely fashion this year? From recent published reports, Astana had payroll issues as recently as the last few weeks. Hard to imagine that a quality organization would do that when they know they're under...

Has anything coming out of Proskurin's mouth turned out to be truthful so far?

Very tragic story.

This is a great triumph for the jury system. The prosecutors also deserve high praise for a job obviously very well done.

I couldn't agree more. There's no hope of defeating doping unless the code of silence among the athletes is broken.

The competence of AC's advisers may not be anything approaching his quality as a cyclist. I'm not optimistic that this situation is going to turn out well for him in the end, judging by how poorly his camp has handled things up til now.

But is this a reliable report, coming as it does from a Kazakh official? Not confirmed yet by the Contador camp, as far as I can tell.

That's certainly a reasonable interpretation. My own take on it is based on the statements I saw this morning to the effect that the purpose of the new rule was to give riders more than a couple of weeks to find a new team and negotiate a new contract, which is all they had previously when they...

Has anyone seen any report regarding how long the riders' right to terminate lasts? I haven't. It's possible that it lasts all the way until the start of the 2010 cycling season, regardless of whether Astana, Sky, and the other teams correct the technical deficiencies that existed on October 20.

This Kazakh official seems not to realize where Astana actually went wrong. Article 2.15.069 bis of the UCI regulations states very clearly that the internet posting UCI made today (October 22) merely reflects a statement of which teams filed the necessary physical licensing documents, as...

And perhaps Zubeldia to RadioShack? Wasn't he recently rumored to want to make that switch?

You could very well be right. We'll probably know for sure very shortly, when some of the affected riders exercise their right to terminate their contracts.

I think you're absolutely right from a legal perspective. Any Astana rider whose contract contains the language that the UCI added to its model contract in July has the option to terminate his contract. But one thing we don't know is whether multi-year contracts signed before that new language...

What's to prevent UCI from essentially manufacturing a reason to revoke Astana's ProTour license? As far as I can tell, UCI doesn't really consider itself answerable to any other body, so why wouldn't they do whatever they think is in the best interests of the sport? Clearly, they don't like...