Vino's bust tragic consequence as Tour cleans its act

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	RELATED • Vinokourov fails doping test, Astana leaves Tour

PAU, France -- No matter who wins this race, it seems destined to go down as the Tour dominated by talk of Alexandre Vinokourov's blood.

Et tu, Vino?

Last Saturday, Vinokourov and Astana teammates Andrey Kashechkin and Andreas Kloden raised eyebrows by taking three of the top four spots at the time trial in Albi. "Whatever those guys are on," said a friend who's spent more time covering this sport than me, "it must be pretty good."

After winning the stage, Vino went out of his way to thank his medical staff for helping him to recover from the nasty crash he suffered in Stage 5, a high-speed spill that left him with 30 stitches in his knees.

His work with Astana's "medical staff," it seems, went beyond antibiotics and fresh bandages. L'Equipe is reporting this afternoon the French anti-doping lab at Chatenay-Malabry found two distinctive types of red blood cells in his A sample following the Albi time trial. When Astana manager Marc Biver got the news, he phoned Christian Prudhomme, the Tour director, who promptly requested that the entire Astana team withdraw from the race. They did.

My story in this week's magazine is a determinedly upbeat account of a race which, though tinged with scandal, had the appearance of cleaning up its act. True, race leader Michael Rasmussen was chucked from the Danish National team last week for missing doping tests earlier this year. Yes, VeloNews ran a story in which a former friend of Rasmussen's accused the Dane of trying to trick him into bringing doping products to Italy. Also, as announced last week, T-Mobile rider Patrik Sinkewitz tested positive for excessive testosterone at a pre-Tour training camp.

The upside is people are getting busted. Unlike the past, the UCI seems genuinely interested in nailing the cheats. Rather than playing footsie with him, Rasmussen's own Danish Cycling Union threw the book at him. The pace of the race has been slower than usual, particularly in the first week. The riders signed a UCI charter before the Tour, vowing to ride clean or face severe consequences. There was a general agreement, among writers I talked to, that this was a cleaner Tour than in past years.

It's a lot cleaner now. Astana is essentially the latest incarnation of a team called Liberty Seguros. That company yanked its sponsorship before last year's Tour, when it was revealed that then-director Manolo Saiz was up to his navel in the Operacion Puerto blood-doping scandal.

To the rescue sailed Astana, a consortium of Kazakh industries only too pleased to throw their support behind national hero Vinokourov, an enormously popular rider famed for his impulsive, audacious attacks. (Describing his racing style two years ago, he said, "When I feel good, I attack. When I don't feel so good, I attack.")

There had been some disquieting news about Vino and the Astanas leading up this year's Tour. L'Equipe revealed Vinokourov is a client of Michele Ferrari, the Italian doctor renowned for saying, "If it doesn't show up in the drug controls, then it's not doping." The UCI announced that it was targeting 10 or so "men in black" -- riders who trained in far-flung, secret locations in black jerseys that disguised their identities, ostensibly to foil drug-testers. What's the big deal, replied Astana in a statement. Yes, our riders sometimes train in plain clothes -- not to avoid UCI "vampires," as the drug-testers are called -- but to foil "cyclo-tourists" who are always trying to get autographs.