KZBlog

L’Equipe, a French sports website, has an interesting article up. They claim that the CFO of Team Astana wants to merge with Saxo Bank or Liquigas. What’s interesting about this story is that apparently no one else on Team Astana knew anything about this, although L’Equipe claims that Aidar Makhmetov, newly appointed as chief financial officer, has already contacted both teams.

Furthermore, it appears that Makhmetov offered Liquigas the use of Kazakhstan gas supply facilities in exchange for the use of their top rider, Vincenzo Nibali. Since when does the CFO of a sports team have the ability to negotiate with the oil and gas infrastructure of a country? (Velonation reports that Astana was willing to pay 3 million Euros to Liquigas and 1.5 million a year to Nibali for 2 years just to buy him outright.

Finally, should Saxobank agree, that would bring Alberto Contador back into the Astana orbit. Contador seemed to have pretty well burned his bridges with Astana, and vice versa. In fact recently, Team Astana released a statement that they supported Contador’s temporary suspension. So how Alberto would feel about being merged back into the team, I don’t know. And how Vinokourov, who plans to retire next year and will likely be given a management role, would feel about Contador coming back or these machinations happening without his knowledge is unclear.

I suspect, however, that either this will all turn out to be a misunderstanding or that any offers will be withdrawn.