"He (Contador) has worked very hard, earning the right to represent our team as the leader this July."
Buryneel on 6/26/09
YEAH RIGHT...........
Can anyone show me where the "team" actually acted in the best interest of Contador and treated him as a true leader?
Dropping in him in a wind split peloton and actually putting riders in front to drive up a time gap?
Keeping him “throttled” from attacking rivals on mountain top finishes under the guise of hurting his team?
The only time the teams interests aligned with “supporting” Contador was when they coincided with supporting Lance. The TTT was important to LA, driving/controlling the peloton was important to LA, etc.
It was obvious to me that from the beginning, it was JB and LA plan to get Lance into yellow ASAP AHEAD of Contador. If they had been successful in doing that, Lance would have been anointed “temporary” leader (just pretending) and use it as further justification to throttle Contador. The longer Lance stayed in yellow the more it would have become impossible for AC to attack without being heavily, heavily criticized. AC knew this and took matters into his own hands.