After the declarations of war to the last drop of blood against doping, he was not a little surprised that the UCI had dismissed the recent cases of multiple doping in Astana, granting the "World Tour" license to the Kazakh team as if nothing had happened. Someone, among the top leaders of the World Cycling Federation, must have looked in the mirror ashamed of such carelessness. So here is the UCI itself requesting the licensing commission to re-examine the case effectively asking for the exclusion of Astana from the major races of the season which is now getting underway. For a cycling that suffered but in the end metabolized the Armstrong earthquake with the disqualification of the Texan and effectively the cancellation of the classification of his seven Tours won, a season without Astana would not be a tragedy, were it not for the team that bears the same name as the capital of Kazakhstan runs Vincenzo Nibali, the ruler of the last Tour, one of the big four of the world pedal. Big who are already sharpening their knives to dethrone Nibali from his yellow kingdom.
Contador is even planning the Giro-Tour double. Chris Froome, who has already won the Ruta del Sol in February, says he is sure of returning to the Martian of 2013. The Colombian Quintana is waiting for the Alps and the Pyrenees to put everyone in line. And he, the Shark of the Strait, the Cannibalì of the 2014 Tour, what does he do? He risks being left standing, feet on the ground, caught up in the chaos of a team that can't break the habit of Epo. A notorious vice knowing the past of the Kazakh team and of his own team manager, Alexander Vinokourov, with a career full of successes - the last one the Olympic gold in London - but marked by too many dark moments and a heavy disqualification for doping.
Even Nibali – like Fabio Aru, another star of the Italian pedal who passed under Vino's orders – knew that by signing a (princely) contract with Vinokourov's team, he would sooner or later be asked about the embarrassing events of the recent past at Astana. , so much so that, for the avoidance of doubt, he had protected himself by requiring the Kazakh house to hire men, including his trusted personal doctor. And during his dazzling Tour he had repeatedly repeated that doping was a curse of the past, from which the team had now redeemed itself and was well equipped to fight it. But just a few days after the end of the Tour, the case of the brothers Maxim and Valentin Iglinskiy broke out.
"Personal actions, rightly to be punished, but beyond any responsibility of our team", Vinokourov had hastened to declare, glossing over the fact that Maxim had been one of Nibali's most precious supporters on the Tour. When the dossier of the two Iglinskiy seemed vanish, here is even another three cases of doping explode one after the other among the young people of the Continental team, a sort of "cantera" of Astana. And yet, despite these five cases within a few months, the UCI had given the green light to racing, while keeping the work of Vinokourov's team under observation and entrusting an audit to be carried out to the University's Institute of Sport Science of Lausanne.
What ever intervened to put this decision into question? Probably from the report, which was drawn up in the Swiss city, good news did not arrive for the Kazakh team and for Vinokourov himself who was never able to dispel all the doubts at the UCI headquarters and who seems – also according to the papers of the Padua trial – never completely broke off relations with Michele Ferrari, the Italian doctor expelled and banned from the UCI, at the center of the most important Epo cases, starting with that of Armstrong.
However the Astana case ends, there should be only one moral: in order to definitively redeem itself from its ancient scourge, cycling must no longer rely on characters compromised by doping and who have built their cycling career on systematic doping, as was the case of Vinokourov but also of Bjarne Rijs, self-confessed doped winner of the 1996 Tour, today technical director of Tinkoff-Saxo, Contador's team. If you don't have the courage to ban them, no matter how painful the act of expulsion is, you will always remain in a situation of permanent suspicion, amidst appeals and pending sentences that degrade cycling.
And today an innocent champion like Nibali is at stake, who is preparing – with what spirit can one imagine him – to face his three great rivals – Froome, Quintana and Contador- in a Tirreno-Adriatico that promises sparks, a sumptuous taste of a season that on paper has all the air of being stellar with a Tour that should finally have the fantastic four at the starting line. Provided that the doping factor, as feared, doesn't ruin everything as it has too often happened in cycling.
