Astana to World: Hands Off Our Man!

By that logic, Bert and Lance are buddies, too! They rode together in 2008. I don’t follow. Is there more to it?

why might he fear being sued? Doesn’t that rather support what Chris is saying?

Are you sure ALL riders? Or just those signed since the new article was written?

AC made some pretty blunt comments in summer about intending to leave. Perhaps he was still too bitter about the Lance/JB stuff to give serious consideration to Astana 3.0?

“Shit. I know, I’ll go get the Inside Scoop over at Podium Cafe!”

The young guns will steal the show. I’m predicting both top ten, Nibali in 5th. Basso relegated to trying to win the Vuelta Ullrich-style, but without a blistering time trial.

It was odd, the salary thing, because once journos started asking riders specifically if they were receiving payment, they all said yes. So, who wasn’t getting paid? I was always a bit confused by this. But there again, when the UCI started putting the pressure on, the Kazakhs threw down the big check.

This is from an article that came out in February of 2009:

Kazakhstan’s economy is in trouble due to problems with its massively indebted financial system. The crisis opens up an opportunity for President Nursultan Nazarbayev to further strengthen his already-firm hold on the country’s economy. It also creates an opportunity for the Kremlin to swoop in given Russia’s financial means, greatly enhancing Moscow’s sway over Kazakhstan, the most strategic and powerful state of the Central Asian countries.

The financial situation in Kazakhstan has deteriorated rapidly due to the extreme indebtedness of its banking sector to foreign lenders caused by a massive expansion of the sector, which has grown at nearly 50 percent annually since 2000. The total assets of Kazakh banks have grown from the equivalent of around 5 percent of Kazakhstan’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 1998 to more than 75 percent in 2008. The latter figure is an astronomical number when compared, for example, to the 55 percent bank asset-to-GDP ratio of Russia, the 85 percent ratio of the U.S., the 130 percent ratio of the Czech Republic and the 95 percent ratio for the eurozone’s newest member, Slovakia.

Relative to the size of its economy, in an extremely brief period Kazakhstan’s banking sector has expanded to the size of the Central European and U.S. banking sectors. But unlike the United States and Central European countries, Kazakhstan lacks the experience to manage its banking sector. Only around 7 percent of the Kazakh banking sector is foreign-owned. While that may have its advantages — in Central Europe, foreign-owned banks were most aggressive in using foreign currency-denominated loans, leading to massive problems in their own right — it also has meant that the Kazakhs had to learn banking on their own. And Kazakhstan’s timing was unfortunate: It was working to build a banking system from scratch during the worldwide flood of credit that since 2001 has inundated emerging markets with cash — certainly not an auspicious time to develop good habits on managing a nascent banking system.

http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20090203_kazakhstan_economic_crisis_and_opportunities

And I recently saw an article (can’t find it at the moment) mentioning that they’ve been busy restructuring all of their debt, to give themselves some relief, but in essence kick the can down the road. In short, these problems could all return in short order.

I’m not saying for a second that Contador claims he’s humble, nor that I think he is (indeed, I rather intended my post to suggest the opposite ;-) ) but it’s certainly been argued on his behalf a few times round here…