Contador advised not to enter Tour de France

 Yes, folks, it's true: news out today that David Howman, who is the boss of WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency as we all know) has advised Contador not to enter the TdF. This is due to the delay by CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport, are we all following these initials?) in hearing Conti's case - as we know, they've now put it back to beyond the Tour.

David Howman says “Legally, he has every right (to ride). It’s up to him. I wouldn’t advise him to do it but I can’t tell him not to.”

Well, that's an interesting stance.

ASO, on the other hand - they're the bunch that run the TdF - are not able to ban him from entering. Their man in charge, Christian Prudhomme, "expressed hope that the case would be resolved prior to the July 2 start of the 2011 Tour".  Of course, he can't come right out and say "get thee hence from our race and never darken our podiums again: well, not unless you can prove that you are totally clean."  But it's clear that he hoped to have the case sorted out one way or the other before the Tour started.

He, and ASO, are hovering a bit nervously around this point, as they got a lot of stick for banning the entire Astana team back in 2008 -  we all remember that, don't we? Contador was on Astana then, and he'd won it in 2007 but nonetheless he was not allowed to enter in 2008 as the Astana team had "multiple doping positives in the team during the 2007 Tour."  We assume that Contador was not one of those positives...  ASO have the right to ban riders, if they break what they call "ethical rules", ie if they are caught cheating: but apparently the rules are that as the rider concerned is co-operating with the anti-doping authorities, and as he has served his ban up until it was overturned, they can't really turn him away.

On the other, other hand (the gripping hand, if you read the same books that I do)(two housepoints to the first person who knows that expression),  we have Unipublic who run the Vuelta, who are delighted to welcome Contador with open arms. It doesn't actually say "whether found guilty or not" but that is the general sub-text feeling of their comments.

So,  fascinating stuff all round.

Where do we all stand?

On my part, I've given it a huge amount of thought over the last many months, and I've come to this conclusion: I actually believe Conti, I think it was an accidental contamination rather than deliberate cheating.

If you're not interested in my views about this, scroll down now!

If you're not sure yourself and want some more info, here's why:

1) the one-of-only-four-labs-that-can-find-it found a tiny, tiny, amount.

2) Conti was told "carry on, mate, don't worry about it, we'll sort it" by the UCI. This indicates that they realised that it was not a doping offence but a contamination issue, either of the beef or of the sample.

3) it only came out because it was leaked by that employee of the lab in Koln, (sorry, English keyboard, no umlauts) and once it was out, it quickly became a big issue - not least because it appeared to be being dealt with in a slightly underhand way.

4) the UCI and WADA have only appealed the ban being overturned because they have to be seen to be stronger than what you might call "political opinion." You know, Conti was backed up by the President of Spain, for heaven's sake, it takes a lot of strength to insist on a ban when there is some doubt about it all, and you have a President booming "Let him off!" at you.

5) Also, of course, we were all saying that the Spanish authorities, being Spanish, would kinda want to let him off, wouldn't they? The cycling press was full of "oh, he only got off because it was partisanship, it's not right for a country to judge it's own nationals, there should be an unbiased international enquiry group". [Which is quite right, in my opinion: countries should not be allowed to "try" their own people, it stands to reason that they will be lenient if they possibly can!]

I'm discounting the whole plasticiser issue, that was only ever mentioned once, by some anonymous lab technician in "a testing laboratory" not necessarily the same one: and it was never substantiated, and in fact only appeared once, all the other reports were cut-and-paste copies of that one report. We saw this for ourselves (back in Schleckland days) because they'd all spelt plasticiser the same, american, way.

So personally, I believe that Conti didn't cheat, and I want the CAS to uphold the overturning of him ban asap so that Andy can kick Conti's bony little butt all the way round France.

(Oh, I could add: 6) Andy said "I believe Conti is innocent" so that ought to count for something, too.)

Of course, I'll be really, REALLY bogged off if Conti wins! But if he does, well (*shrugs shoulders*) that will just show that he is the strongest rider in the world right now. I hope he isn't, I want Andy to win, but of course I'm a bit biased on that point.

Actually, it would be nice for Frankie to win, Andy second, Conti 4th (I don't mind who comes third, we could vote for a deserving person, maybe Igor Anton? Sadly, it would be a bit unrealistic to vote for Johan Van Summeren just because he's an honorary Schlecklander...). Then next year, Andy can win, and "someone else" can come 2nd and 3rd. (*big sigh*)

Right, that's enough of the serious (!) stuff, let's get onto something a bit more frivolous. I know! Captions!

Here's the Leopard Trek car, getting a bit lost and having to take a short-cut in order to catch up with Andy:

And now, with thanks to Figgy for suggesting it, another Puppy Picture: OGL really will  do anything that these photographers tell him, won't he?

"Go and pick some of those yellow daisy things, would you?"  "Try not to sneeze, sweetie." "OK, just hold one up in front of you - oh, bless you. Right, drop that bare stalk, pick up another one and this time don't hold it quite so high - yes, that's it" *click*

And we have to love this little girly, I've awarded her honorary Schlecklander status:

Finally, the ever-fascinating world of Search Terms: in the last 24 hours, we've had people getting here from searching for:

"Andy Schleck girlfriend 2011"  Ah, it's you again, hello! (*waves*) You don't give up, do you!

"Johan van Summeren"   14 of them!  We're happy to have JVS as an honorary Schlecklander, although I would still like to know what's behind all this rolling up of the sleeves...

"coug andy"   What!!  I had to try that one out for myself, and golly, there we are on the first page, yay!

"coug andy schleck"  WHAT!!!  Even better, we have 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th places on the first page, yay! Go, Team Schleckland!

"musette team leopard"  hmmmm, people have apparently heard about my campaign to get myself a LT musette this year.

And on a linked subject, hello to the Andy Schleck fan in Basildon! Please say "hello", you've been very diligent at reading the older posts and keeping up to date with the newer ones, so come along, make a comment and join us!