Last year Alberto Contador won the maillot jaune in le Tour de France as a part of Team Discovery Channel. And Levi Leipheimer came in third place for Team Discover Channel. Now Team Discovery Channel has disbanded and Alberto and Levi joined up with Team Astana and the ASO (Amaury Sports Organization) has banned Team Astana from being able to ride in this year’s Tour de France, because of past issues related to illegal blood doping. But this year’s team is different.
I understand that they want to draw a hard line in the sand with teams that are caught in such practices, but giving the whole team what amounts to a death sentence is stupid. Alberto and Levi had no part in it as well as many of their fellow team members. You can read more about it here.
So Levi has started an online petition to allow him and his team to ride. You can join the campaign by going to letleviride.com and signing up. Hopefully, this will cause the ASO to realize they need to allow him and Albero to ride this year.