Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme is having a hard time with the possibility that Ivan Basso will be at the Tour de France this year. He is trying to keep any cyclist out of the Tour that was implicated in Operacion Puerto, an alleged blood doping network in Spain. Last year, Tour contenders Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso were both implicated in the blood doping probe and were kept out of the the Tour.
The Italian authorities have cleared Ivan Basso of any wrongdoing, but that’s not good enough for Prudhomme.
I’m not sure what to think of Prudhomme. He apparently wants cycling to be clean, but as far as I can tell, Basso was cleared by the appropriate authorities. Regardless, there is something really good that may come out of this–Levi Leipheimer may be the Discovery Team leader at the Tour de France. That bodes well for Leipheimer since the Discovery Channel team is probably the best cycling team right now and they may be able to power him to victory.