The Astana Battle..

[BroDeal]

How does Kessler's return fit into all of this?

A team of Vino, Kash, Kessler, Klodi, and Contador would be formidable.

 

[dgodave]

What about this:
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Wasnt Lance in the habit of doubleing the tradtional divide-the-winnings bonus? Or did that just happen that one time?
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Did Contador do the same thing? If not, hasnt Lance offered his team an $ incentive to favor himself... (which he can afford like no other cyclist)? Of course that fails if neither he nor Contador wins...
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[gatete]

I looked at the times and Lance lost 17 second on the climb in the TT. that doesn't mean he is going to lose minutes in the mountains. I think his confidence in TT is not there anymore at least in the extremely technical TTs and the descent was extremely technical.

Stage 7 will be a test to see if the 4 Astana boys are worlds apart. I think Contador is the strongest but he didn't prove that he is worlds above Lance in the TT. I am really hoping Lance helps Conti win it would be really good to see him passing the torch but who knows....

the other thing, and I think its becuase Conti is Spanish but i would be curious to see if he is the one causing all of the splits in the team.....think about it we only see one side with Lance becuase he is so in the media.[/QUOTE]

Let's reverse it, picture Lance in Contador's last year and half wining Giro,vuelta, and being better by any contender, and tell me you wouldn't consider him the Leader, I understand is hard to admit it sometimes specially if you like a rider, I root for Contador I don't deny it but to my defense I like him because of his achievements or to the very least to his latest achievements, Lance is done, or you think he's going to have a LOOK part two? AC will eat him alive at Ventoux you'll see.

 

[runninboy]

I think most of this internal strife in Astana is planned, i think Lance was holding back slightly in the tt( noticebly slower cadence) and while everyone is marking Kloden & AC Lance will take off, if he fails he uses the Hinault traitor excuse, if he succeeds it was the strategy all along.
AC knows this, this is the plan since LA came back. But i imagine he is pretty ****ed. From his view, he is the strongest in the world, he wins the tour, gets banned the next year through no fault of his own wins everything he can, the giro and then this guy who had his time rejoins the team and his DS tells him about the decoy strategy. Levi was not happy when he was a decoy for AC before but there was nothing he could do because AC was so much better. Now AC is the best and he is going to be the decoy so lance can win again? I bet he is ****ed because he knows it should be the other way around. JB loves this because he can pretend he is a great tactician,"we know everyone will be watching AC so i send Lance we plan it all along we just don't tell the press"or "we send Lance up road but he is just decoy, when other teams chase THEN we send AC on counterattack, tour over"
JB & Lance are Jackasses AND bad actors