vino’s power struggle continues… .
based on the astanafans.com exchanges between the money man mahmetov and some furious fans of vino, the gist of the most bizarre stuff narrows down to this…
- in connection with hiring kash, mahmetov said that astana had only 3 months uci obligations to vino but apparently 'kept him on a payroll out of respect to his achievements‘.
- ‘martinelli makes all sporting decisions except hiring kazakhstani riders’, said mahmetov…yet, it’s hard to imagine why a wise old-timer like martinelli would want to embarrass himself by putting an apparently out-of-shape, untested kash at the lead of astana for the vuelta
- ‘vino requested and received a permission to directly conduct hiring negotiations with riders’, said mahmetov..sounds like marginalizing vino as we all assumed that vino is the de facto boss and didn’t need a stinking permission
- one fan placed a comment (later deleted) that she’s in possession of an audio recording where
‘mahmetov pledged war on vino’...(truly weird)
-vino’s role will be decided in november….(why so long)