Bruyneel: ASO decision "unfair"

After Tour de France organisers Amaury Sports Organisation (ASO) announced their team invitations for this year's event, leaving out ProTour team Astana and therefore the 2007 Tour winner Alberto Contador, team manager Johan Bruyneel reacted to the news.

According to Belgian Sportwereld, the former Discovery Channel sports director called the decision "unfair, illogical, ridiculous and arrogant."

ASO left out the Astana team because the squad had been involved in doping scandals in relation to the Tour de France twice in the last two years. "We cannot wipe away what happened," race director Christian Prudhomme explained in mid-February, when ASO already communicated that Astana would not be invited. "In 2006, a team came out of the ashes of Liberty Seguros. Within this team, half of the riders were linked to Operación Puerto and cannot take the start of the Tour. The next year, they explain to us that it's a new team, a new management, that everything about it is new. We trust them and invite them to the Tour. But we made a mistake to take them - and we don't want to make that mistake once again."