10 AM Eastern Today. The article’s from l’Equipe, and in French (English translation here), but from what I can gather, it means that there’s another 9 riders going home after Astana’s departure yesterday.
Read it in English here. The CyclingNews bit is nice, as it’s got plausible deniability from Vino – maybe someone else’s blood got into his legs in his earlier crash. Not beyond the realm of possibility, but ….
F$ck.
Update: We can name names now. It’s Cristian Moreni from the French Cofidis team.
Update 2: Another 8 innocent riders have left the tour, as Moreni’s team, Cofidis, withdraws. Neca, over at Weighty Words commented yesterday about how no-one was mentioning that Andreas Kloden, who had been sitting at 5th place in the General Classification got screwed when Astana pulled out after Vinokourov popped positive.
Who I really feel for right now are Menchov, Boogerd, and Flecha. These guys rode their guts out defending the yellow jersey, and instead of a nice payout at the end, are going to walk away with nothing.