Let Levi ride -- for Joe's Concrete, though, not Astana

Watching pro cycling these days is like looking at a room full of 2-year olds. Like the folks who influence the sport, the kids run in different directions, when they want, with whom they want. They don't ask permission. They don't ask questions. They yell "Mine!' They grab. They don't share. They have tantrums. They do things that make no sense. Your ears can bleed from the chaos and madness. You get exhausted from trying to keep up.

No wonder then on Wednesday, when Dean Gore linked cycling with the words "Joe's Concrete Service", he made complete sense. One of the most absurdly stupid dramas ever to take place in pro cycling could have been avoided if Levi Leipheimer right now was racing for Joe's Concrete Service instead of Astana.

Astana has baggage. Joe's Concrete Service only has concrete.

"I think if Levi was riding for Joe's Concrete Service," said the director of product marketing for Trek bicycles, "the name change would have been enough for the ASO (Amaury Sports Organisation)."

The ASO owns the Tour de France and has kicked Levi and the Astana team out of the event because Astana was dirtier than a 2-year old playing in mud. Of course that would be the Astana teams of 2006 and 2007. But say the name of "Astana" in France and you will get the same spit and indignation if you had said "the Astana drug cartel in Colombia is riding in the Tour."

With almost a completely new roster and new manager, with $676,637 being spent on drug testing, Astana in 2008 has done almost everything except change its name and team colors of blue and white. And Gore tried to persuade Astana's eight-sponsor consortium to do that. Trek is the official supplier of clothing and gear for the team.

"We designed a uniform that was black and yellow," said Gore from Trek's offices in Waterloo, Wis., "which is about as far away from blue and white as you can get. But in the end, the people who pull the purse strings in Kazakhstan decided otherwise."

Maybe, Gore theorized, Astana now rues the day it rejected black and yellow. Same color, same name, that was enough for the ASO to punish the team and local boy Leipheimer. Does that make any sense? Of course not.

"Everything seems like politics," moans Odessa Gunn, Leipheimer's wife.

And to that extent, Leipheimer and Trek have joined the fray, creating a Web site -- www.LetLeviRide.com -- that allows people who are equally indignant to sign a petition that will be sent to ASO. Leipheimer wants 100,000 signatures. Wednesday afternoon, five days into its existence, 21,512 people have signed to support the greatest injustice -- if you believe the outrage -- since Victor Hugo's Jean Valjean was imprisoned five years for stealing a loaf of bread.

"This stuff has to stop," Gunn said. "They are toying with people's lives."

Ah, now we are getting to the nut of it, the thing that makes cycling go round-and-round. And it's not the big wheels on the bikes. It's the big wheels who run governments, doping agencies, national cycling federations, Olympic committees and, last but not the least, the feud between the International Cycling Union and ASO. All these folks have political pull and significantly impact the sport but none more so than when ICU and ASO start throwing sand at each other in the sand box.

ICU is the international cycling body that controls cycling, except for the private companies like ASO, that own the Tour de France, Tour of Spain, Tour of Italy. ICU would like ASO to follow its rules. ASO says phooey.

On Wednesday, ICU president Pat McQuaid threatened to sue ASO if Alberto Contador is not allowed to race in the Tour de France. Contador, an Astana rider, won the Tour de France in 2007 for another team. It'll be curious if such a lawsuit can have a legal foundation, not to mention the intended positive result.

"I wouldn't be surprised if the president of Kazakhstan makes a phone call to ASO," Gore said. "Kazakhstan has a close relationship and is very important to the French."

Huh? How?

"Oil," Gore said simply.

Odessa, this is how political cycling has become. Is it conceivable one country with oil would deprive another country of it because their bicycle team is banned from competing in a race? The issue is much bigger than Levi Leipheimer.

"Would the French turn over control of the Tour de France to the ICU?" I asked Gore.

All Gore did was snicker.

"It gives us hope," Gunn said of the Web site petition.

But how does hope combat jealousy and fear? One theory gaining a lot of speed is ASO's true distaste of new Astana manager Johan Bruyneel. Bruyneel was the manager for all seven of Lance Armstrong's Tour victories and we all know how well that went down with the French, an American more successful in its event than any Frenchmen. Add to that the still lingering doubt that Armstrong was clean while doing it -- nearly all of the riders who finished on the final podium with him during that span ended up testing dirty.

Oh, and Bruyneel now is managing Contador. The 25-year old Spaniard, some think, might become the next Armstrong. So, for the French, imagining the evil and tricky Bruyneel linking up with another great rider, and the rider isn't even French by the way, it's almost too much for the French to bear. Especially since it's been 22 years since a Frenchman has won the Tour de France, Bernard Hinault in 1985.

"What cycling needs is a strong personality to settle all conflicts, to be in charge of everything," Gunn said.

She is so right but, sad to say, Peter Ueberroth, the man who made the Olympics profitable, is 70 years old and out of the business of saving people from themselves.

What's left are scandals, petty jealousies and hidden agendas, with the athletes, in comparison, looking good.

See, the drug that influences pro cycling more than any other is power.

Too bad you can't kick people out of the sport who have too much of it.

You can reach Staff Columnist

Bob Padecky at 521-5490 or at bob.padecky@pressdemocrat.com.