Check out Chris Horner’s latest blog post with his account of “getting that call” informing him he wouldn’t be riding this year’s Tour. I think they should rename this team ASStana. The Kazakh sponsors don’t pay the team riders’ salaries while they are competing in the Giro, but then they pay up and mandate that a Kazakhi rider makes the Tour Team. Then they let Contador have some cronies, because he is a basket case and too worried the Yanks will gang up on him from within the team to support Lance. All of the sudden, there’s no room for Horner. I think the race just got less interesting with that one decision.

Correction: I originally posted that Service Course was Dylan Casey’s blog, but it is not. He was only mentioned in the post. My apologies to the editor’s of Service Course, a great blog, so we are keeping our post here and links intact.

I picked this up via Twitter from Marty Jemison (@MartyJemison), who is over in Europe running his cycling tours. It must be absolutely electric to be in Europe right now, with all the buzz about the upcoming Tour. Despite the usual Juice News which we like to comment on, there seems to be a lot of speculation about a possible duel between Lance and Contador. Marty forwarded this link to a blog post on Service Course speculating that Contador had one foot out the door and was headed to Garmin. Interesting speculation on what it would do to the dynamic of Vaughters’ outfit. Read for your self and decide. What do you think? Will there be an Armstrong vs. Contador internal battle, like the LeMond vs. Hinault feud? It could be the most exciting thing that has happened in a long time.