This is a random Tour de France post within what is exclusively a record blog...I know this...but I just came across something interesting that is vaguely associated with one of this blog's favorite things...autographs.So, I just found out that Alexandre Vinokourov tested positive for a blood transfusion. What had been a particularly amazing 3 days of racing has turned into another letdown. Vino has been such a wonderful story of recovery from this tour, crashing very badly in the first few days and fighting back to provide some of the most dramatic moments of the race so far - winning the second time trial, losing 20+ minutes the next day, then coming back to win the most recent stage in the Pyrénées. Vino's situation did not just affect his Tour chances, he took the entire Astana team with him. Andreas Klöden has a previous second place and third place finish under his belt, yet was not tipped to be the leader of the Astana team. Klöden first fell victim to the T-Mobile shakeup that occurred last year when Ullrich dropped out of the Tour and the entire team fell under suspicion, especially the third-place Klöden. T-Mobile shook up the ranks just to clean house of the old guard and Klöden resurfaced in the Vinokourov-helmed Astana team. Once again Klöden find himself at the mercy of others...
Well, in my poking around I found he has a website. If you're a cycling fan (like me), you might be interested to know that he has a section of his site that actually promotes the fact that he'll sign autographs for you if you send him something in the mail. I think this is the first time that I've seen a pro athlete do this...rather nice. So I posted it.
Klöden truly is one of the greatest cyclists out there right now, and crap like this will either motivate him to destroy everyone next year, or utterly break his spirit.
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