Now, I really hope Contador wins the Vuelta.
As long as the sport (riders, sponsors, fans) consider the Tour de France to the THE bicycle race, ASO will stay in the catbird seat. And UCI can fax threats with sanctions until they're bloody with paper cuts.
ASO has the muscle - and they know it (unfortunately).
__________________
Syke
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
H.L. Mencken, (1926)