by Zach Bigalke

Created on: March 27, 2008

With the dissolution of the Discovery Channel/U.S. Postal Service machinery which won eight Tours de France - seven with the last American victor of the race, Lance Armstrong - the future would look bleak to a casual American sports fan. It initially appeared as though a great future for the sport of cycling had been sown in America when Phonak's Floyd Landis captured the 2006 title on the heels of Armstrong's final victory... but then a positive test for exogenous testosterone and a failed appeal stripped the disgraced former Mennonite of his accomplishment. In 2007, Discovery Channel went out with a bang, placing Spanish rider Alberto Contador on the top step of the podium and seeing American favorite Levi Leipheimer place third...

Now, with the dissolution of that Discovery Channel framework, team director Johan Bruyneel has taken his framework to a new squad and a new sponsor. With him he has brought Contador, Leipheimer and another former Tour podium finisher, Andreas Kloden. Yet this team is being denied a spot at this year's Tour de France. Race organizer Amaury Sport Organization, wary of previous indiscretions by former incarnations of the Astana/Liberty Seguros team, has rejected Astana for all its races in the 2008 season. John Wilcockson, one of the foremost cycling authorities in the United States, wrote this for VeloNews (p. 31, 24 March 2008):

"What Prudhomme [Christian, Tour de France race director] and ASO president [Patrice] Clerc are not recognizing is that their vendetta with a name is not only diminishing the prestige of their race but also depriving Leipheimer, 34, of perhaps his final chance of winning the world's greatest bike race. His fans have been rightly vociferous in their cry to 'Let Levi Ride!' What needs to happen now is for the rest of the cycling family - including the riders unions, team associations, national cycling federations and the UCI - to pressure ASO into reversing what is clearly a hot-headed move."

The problem, though, is not with ASO - the problem lies with American sports fans who wish to take a short view of a long-standing problem. Leipheimer may never win the Tour de France, and this decision by ASO decreases the odds of his realization of a lifelong goal. But everyone must take a long-term view toward the health and stability of the sport. Teams which have long been regarded as nefarious and rogue in their practices need to reaffirm their commitment to clean sport before gaining admittance to the "Holy Grail"

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