The ASO announced in a press release that it will not register the Tour de France with the UCI this year. Instead they are solely running under the FFC (French Federation).

This is due to the ongoing fight between the ASO and the UCI mostly over doping.

The Tour will run without UCI officials or anti-doping inspectors.
Riders run the risk of being black listed (sanctioned) by the UCI if they participate.

Interesting.

UCI press release here.

Carl

the Euro road situation is developing into another IRL/CART debacle.

Without the doping inspectors, I guess they hope they will not have the public drama of the doping scandals of the last few years. I don't see the reason then of not having Asatana in it this year then, if the reason they are denied a spot has to do with last years scandal, and that Alberto Contadors name may have been involved in a another doping scandal, cause they found a sample with the intials AC. I was just looking at a pic of Armstrong from when he won his 7th, and he had his kids on the podium. The race doesn't seem the same

I think that they'll still have doping inspectors, just not the UCI ones.
That may or may not let some offenders slip through the cracks.
It would seem that the Tour de France organization stands to gain with softer anti-doping as it would lessen the potential for having another humiliating result.

Team Astana is alive and well. Levi Leipheimer is their team captain now.

Teams invited to the 2008 tour here.

Carl

Not only are they alive and kicking, with only a weeks notice they were given, they went out and did well at the giro. Contador one,and for not training for a race Levi did well as well

ASO has said Contador is welcome at the Tour if he joins a different team.

So what happend to:


Landis: did he win or not? Hip surgery?

Contrador: Did he win?

Levi: is he done?

The guy I thought rocked was Michael Ras-mUsen (as Leggit would say). That guy was insane... Dope'n, ohhh I'm sure.

Landis was stripped of his title and has lost his appeal to CAS.

yes, Contador won.

Rasmussan, I think got a 2 year ban for doping.

So why isn't he riding this year? Wasn't he "accused" of doping and they dropped the claim? something weird happend.

Bobke on Versus was talking about it the other night and I caught the tail end

He switched to the Astana team and then Astana got booted from the Tour by the ASO.

I finally caught the part I missed. So he just had to switch teams and he probably could have snatched another title... Well, maybe.. Just switching teams would have activated him as a contender.