If there’s one thing most people agreed on in the aftermath of Unipublic’s refusal to grant RadioShack an invitation to the Tour of Spain, it’s that the stated reason - not a strong enough roster - was B.S.
Fact: Unipublic
is 49 percent owned by the Amaury Sports Organization, which runs the Tour de France.
Fact: RadioShack has a
higher UCI ranking (8th after Janez Brajkovic’s Dauphine win, up from 14th before that) than four of the teams granted discretionary invites: Xacobeo-Galicia and Andalucia-CajaSur for certain, but also Garmin (15th) and Sky (17th).
Fact: The ASO had already invited RadioShack and BMC to participate in the Tour de France long before Landis’ allegations were made public. That invitation is not an informal gesture; it’s a binding legal contract that is not easily rescinded.
Fact: the ASO has made a habit of not inviting teams and racers to Grand Tours who are under investigation for doping.
Fact: Politics has played a role in many a past selection at the Grand Tours. Spain has three ProTour level teams (as recently as 2004 they had five Division I teams). And only two Spanish teams race on the Pro Continental level that makes them eligible for wild-card selection. What do you know, both got picked. And to make room for those two spots, some teams got flicked.
Add it all up and it suggests that the real reason that RadioShack was excluded was a combination of the criminal investigation and good old-fashioned jingoism.
A final fact: The ASO is far from consistent about this sort of thing. Although it too was subject to a scandal in 2007, Rabobank was not barred from the 2008 Tour. Even this year, even at the Vuelta, inconsistency is evident, as Caisse d’Epargne, said to be
under investigation in France for suspicious medical waste at last year’s Tour and still openly defending its banned star rider Valverde, is in the Vuelta.
Is it fair? Absolutely not. But it’s not unprecedented; in fact, it may not even be unexpected.
