Rather than attempt a war of words with the Amaury Sports Organization, organizers of the Tour de France, team Astana chooses to keep the dialog going with their legs.
In just three days team Astana has racked up six national championship titles:
Russian Road Race: Sergey Ivanov
Lithuania Road Race: Tomas Vaitkus
Portugal TT: Sérgio Paulinho
Kazakhstan Road Race: Assan Bazayev
Russia TT: Vladimir Gusev
Kazakhstan TT: Andrey Mizurov
Granted not the most highly contested championships, it still speaks to the class of the riders. Remarkably, 2007 Tour de France champion Alberto Contador sealed up a win at the Giro d’Italia earlier this month without any preparation. Certainly an indication of what “could have been” had he been invited to defend his title at the big show this July.