Astana to be tainted by the doping brush thanks to Kloeden

Astana's Andreas Kloeden

A report to come out on Monday from German publication, Der Spiegel, is set to implicate German riders Andreas Kloeden and Matthias Kessler in illegal blood transfusions, citing the findings of an independent commission investigating doping.

The commission spent two years looking into doping allegations against two doctors who allegedly put a doping system into place at Freiburg University Clinic between 1995 and 2006 for the former Team Telekom, later known as T-Mobile.

Doctors Lothar Heinrich and Andreas Schmid, fired by the university in 2007, have admitted providing and administering doping material until 1999. But the commission concluded they continued until at least 2006, Der Spiegel reported.

Kloeden who now rides for Astana and has always denied doping. Kessler is currently serving a doping ban.

Astana have just managed to get some good press on Lance being allowed to ride the Tour de France and now this little bombshell is going to hit them hard. It will be interesting to see how the team responds to it and what the future wll hold for Kloeden within the team. I’m hesitant to speculate just yet, so won’t 🙂

Lance’s stolen time trial bike found

Sacramento Police Officer with Lance's recovered TT bike

According to a brief mention on the Astana Team‘s Twitter account: “Police believe that they have located Lance Armstrong’s Trek time-trial bike. More details later.”

A few moments later BikeRadar.com reported that the Sacramento Police Department “has confirmed that Lance Armstrong’s one-off Trek Equinox TTX Livestrong time trial bike has been recovered.”

Apparently the thieves didn’t know what they had taken and were trying to sell it for a small amount of cash. What idiots!

Lance and his training & racing gear

Lance's Livestrong brand

According to Lance Armstrong’s posting on his Twitter account, he has been receiving a lot of questions from fans regarding his training in his team Astana gear. So in response to all these questions, he as informed his loyal fan base that he is going to ride/train in his LiveStrong kit, but will race in his Astana gear.  His #1 priority is to promote his LiveStrong global campaign.

So for all of you that are wondering about this, here you have it straight from the horse’s mouth!