I think he should ride if he feels he has properly recovered after his Giro victory. If he feels properly recovered, and he doesn't compete following Howmans comments, and then he is acquitted by CAS,he will regret listening to that man's loose comments. And the cycling world will spin wildly, that he got off, but didn't compete in the TdF. In fact, Howman wouldn't deny that they are pondering putting a tolerance level on the books, regarding drugs like Clenbuterol. So everyone who wants to hang AC for the miniscule # of picograms of clenbuterol he had in his system, might be after a man who at a different time, and in fact, because of this controversial case, would end up innocent. What a bad joke that would be.
In fact, I've become more opposed to banning riders, for any length of time. I think that riders should be severely penalized financially, and any results obtained while using PEDs should of course be disallowed. And if a team elects to void their contracts, they would be entitled to. But completely ban them from their jobs? NO. If bans had been in place all along, we'd barely know who Eddie Merckx is. He was busted 4 times......4 TIMES! With the time he would have spent banned, by todays standards, he never would have had enough time to compile his amazing palmares. Banning isn't stopping the plague of PEDs. All we have is a merry go round of banned riders being banished, and banned riders coming back. What purpose is all that serving?