Sour wine?

Alexander Vinokuorov won stage 13 today after a vintage, aggressive move within the last 10K.

But I really wonder how the ASO, the TdF organizer, felt about it. During the 2007 Tour, he tested positive for blood doping and he and his team, ASTANA (with a different structure now) was thrown out of the race. It would have been that simple if Vino had confessed, serve his 2-year ban and get back to racing or would have challenged the result and maybe retire from the sport for good.

But he didn't do both. In the normal process of a positive test, it's the national federation, in Vino's case the Kazakh Cycling Federation, who will hand out a 2-year ban. However, the federation instead shamelessly handed out a 1-year ban that angered the cycling establishment. The UCI appealed to the International Arbitration of Sport and which ordered the Kazakhs to overturn their decision.

But then Vino "retired" and the case was dropped. Then the case got murky from there. The "retired" Vino was seen training and everyone surmised that he was coming back to ASTANA. With old ASTANA structure purged and now under the supervision of Johann Bruyneel, it was hard for a convicted doper to fit right in like nothing happened. Besides, ASTANA now had the defending champion Alberto Contador and the comebacking Lance Armstrong so the team wasn't really looking for additional star power. But remember that Vino was the one who put up the team and the team is sponsored by the Kazakhs so the linkage is so hard to sever. It was an explosive mix.

But everything fell into place when LA formed his own team. Bruyneel also left ASTANA and with LA and formed RADIO SHACK, taking with them most of the riders and the structure of the team. Fortunately for ASTANA, AC resigned with the team when he realized that the team was his best chance to win the Tour and even if some teams offered him more money.

On the other hand, AC wasn't keen in signing with ASTANA since he didn't want to be associated with a convicted doper since AC was also involved in the infamous "Operation Puerto" doping scandal. Another reason why AC wasn't keen in joining ASTANA was that he didn't like to share top billing with a rider, even though not as good as he is, calling the shots. It was just less than a year when he was in a similar situation with LA.

Strangely, there really wasn't much interest in AC considering that he already had two Tours and at 27yo, had the potential to break LA's 7 TdF wins. So Contador grabbed the best offer financially and athletically and signed with ASTANA.

As for Vino, the guy has never said unequivocally that he doped nor did he say that he regretted what he did like David Millar or Ivan Basso. Media has been hard on LA for suspected doping but they never went as hard as with Vino. We now have a winner who is unrepentant as ever and who described his win in the classic Liege-Bastogne-Liege earlier this year as "revenge".

I bet the UCI and ASO are cringing in a dark room somewhere. (THE FREEMAN)