Bike World News

Tour de France champion Alberto Contador is waiting for legal advice before deciding whether to break his contract with Astana. Astana says that they will continue to try and work with Contador to persuade him to stay with the team. Astana has fought for financial stability all season, and the return of convicted doper Alexander Vinokourov to the team does not seem to he helping their case either.

The rule that would allow Contador to allow him to extricate himself from the troubled Kazakh team was just put into place in July.

The team attributed the problems in getting their license completed to issues of geographical conditions, distance and time difference. They say that they will have the necessary paperwork to the UCI well in advance of the November 20th deadline.

If Contador finds himself free, he’ll have many suitors, including U.S.-based Garmin-Slipstream, Spain’s Caisse d’Epargne squad and the Belgian-sponsored Quick Step team.

Contador is letting his brother focus on the legal issues and continues to train for criteriums this weekend in Oviedo (Saturday the 24th) and Alcobendas (Sunday the 25th). “After all these months of waiting, I am very calm at last. My lawyers are the ones that dictate whether it is possible to break my contract or not. I hope to know their opinion as soon as possible, as well as experts from the UCI, in order to make a decision. Meanwhile, I keep working as before, focused exclusively on my sport training. My brother is in charge of these other issues.”

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