Astana forms new cycling league after being booted from Pro Tour
February 27, 2015 § 16 Comments
UCI President Brian Cookson announced today that team Astana would be asked to leave the Pro Tour due to irregularities in their application. “I told them they were drinking at the Last Chance Saloon,” said Cookson. “But they went ahead and ordered the drink with the pink umbrella. Oh, well.”
When asked about the procedure, Cookson’s assistant, Marc-Yves Surle Table explained: “We sent them a letter asking them to please not come to our races. It’s a very polite letter, firm but polite. Of course in the letter we vousvoyer.”
“If that doesn’t work,” said Cookson, “we get tough. We send a second letter, full-on tutoyer. We really ask them with incredible firmness, resolve, and indiscriminate use of the informal third person pronoun and its associated verb conjugations. They will see we mean business.”
Hans Castorp, the UCI’s third undersecretary for protocol and official correspondence, explained the next steps. “Sometimes even a letter filled with ‘tu’ doesn’t do the trick. So we start all over again, this time with sietzen followed by dutzen. They pretty much get the message then.”
Alexandre Vinokourov, doper-in-chief of Team Astana, was dismissive. “They can du or tu us all they want. We’re staying in the Last Chance Saloon and we’re gonna drink the fuggin’ place dry. Then we’ll beat up the barkeep, stuff potatoes down the toilet drains, and burn the fuggin’ joint to the ground.”
Vinokourov announced that he also has a “Plan B” in the event that an all-night drunkfest followed by arson at the Last Chance Saloon doesn’t pan out. According to the team’s publicist, Mohammed Emwazi, Team Astana has already formed a breakaway cycling league led by Johan Bruyneel with tanks, troops, armored personnel carriers, and artillery support from the Russian Federation. According to Emwazi, the new league will be based in the Donetsk People’s Republic, in Eastern Ukraine.
“We already have a full roster of teams,” Emwazi said. “The Donetsk Destroyers, the Luhansk Liberators, the Debaltseve Demons, the Mariupol Marauders, and the Crimea Killers.” When it was pointed out that Mariupol was still part of Ukraine, Emwazi said, “Not for long.”
The league’s first major event will be the Breaking Away Tour, which will pass through the most scenic and challenging areas of the fledgling separatist republic. “The Donetsk Airport, for example,” said Emwazi, “is a place rife with memories of sacrifice and heroism. We will probably do a crit around the rubble and then finish it off with a volley of long-range missiles towards Kiev.”
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Cycling in the South Bay 
OMG you’re like soooo funny.
Have a good weekend!
You, too!
Firmly worded letters and e-mails are my second favourite form of communicating displeasure. Large bricks with small thermo-nuclear devices are my preferred means of getting the point across.
BTW, I need to be at that party, although I don’t drink anymore either, thanks a lot Wanky, stuffing potatoes down the toilets is just more fun than any one team should have by themselves.
Right? Who needs beer when you can blow up shit, so to speak.
That’s so cool. I didn’t realize Astana drank at Naja’s Place.
Indeed, they do. Did.
The image of Vino and the gang tearing up the saloon made me laugh out loud because I actually could see him doing that!
Thanks for a Friday morning laugh! You should submit some your “stuff” to Comedy Central’s “Daily Show”
“Stuff.” Perfect!
The US has been practicing (training) quite hard with Nuclear weapons since the 1940’s. Spent 100’s of billions on that ‘deterrent’!!! Time to race. We should enter that crit around the rubble! We have a real good chance of a podium finish. – Bill O’Reilly
A trillion here, a trillion there … pretty soon you’re talking real money.
Oh man, I read this wrong. I thought they were kicking out Asians! Doing a CX race in eastern Ukraine sounds awesome!
They did cancel the Beijing Tour de COPD.
I hear after stuffing potatoes down the sewer, EmwazI pulled out his black mask and knife and seperated each toilet from its wax ring. Glad he finally got some legit work.
I think stuffing potatoes is a euphemism for what those wankers do to each other under the black bathrobes.
I knew it. Astana’s MO has Jihadi John’s signature media spin at every turn. Thank you for confirming.
Doing the hard investigative journalism so you don’t have to.