Johan Bruyneel has announced that he will part ways with the Astana team at the end of the season, leaving them to find a new Director Sportif for 2010.
Claiming a breakdown in relations with the Kazakh backers of the Pro Tour team over whether Kazakhstan’s Alexander Vinokourov will return to the team following a two-year ban for blood doping during the 2007 Tour de France.  Vinokourov stated earlier this year that he intended to rejoin the team.
Velonews speculates that Tour officials may frown on letting Vino race the tour next year (assuming they find a new team director), but heck, they let Boonen in this year and they “threatened” to bar Lance Armstrong after the testing fiasco, too.
Contador said it’s news to him and he’ll think about it after he wins (er, finishes) this year’s Tour de France.  He may not have to think about it too hard.
So, what’s Bruyneel going to do?  We’ll if I were a bettin’ man, I’d say he’s going to…
…go to work for Lance’s new team, which could possibly be sponsored by Oracle Corp and keep us posted via OracleCycling.com.
Without any knowledge of this language, we took the liberty of loosely translating Bruyneel’s interview with Sporza TV:
Dat Bruyneel het voor bekeken houdt bij Astana, hoeft geen verwondering te wekken. Voor de start van de Tour was Vinokoerov immers duidelijk: “Als ik er niet in mag, moet Bruyneel weg.”
TRANSLATION: That Bruyneel had poor big head with Astana, have been wetting his underpants. Before the start of de Tour Vinokoerov was like dude: “I like night mags with Bruyneels dog.
Die woorden zijn bij Bruyneel in het verkeerde keelgat geschoten. “We zouden eerst een eventuele terugkeer bespreken, maar een dag voordien gaf hij al een persconferentie in Monaco, in ons hotel dan nog”, vertelt Bruyneel.
TRANSLATION: The words by Bruyneel in heat gets cool cats scootin’. “We shouted and eventually the tiger spoke, more dogs can bark at the Monaco press conference in a hotel for dogs,” said Bruyneel.
“Nadien bereikten mij ook nog enkele reacties van de Kazakse wielerfederatie en toen was het duidelijk. Astana is een afgesloten hoofdstuk na dit jaar.”
TRANSLATION: My reaction is nasty like beer mixed with egg nog when Kazakh’s wheel federation was like dude, Astana is an ass large hoof stuck in it hard.
Over zijn toekomstplannen wil Bruyneel nog niet uitweiden. Wellicht stampt onze landgenoot met Lance Armstrong een nieuw (Amerikaans) team uit de grond.
TRANSLATION: After they took my plans Bruyneel will not remain. We’d like to stamp on his large foot with Lance Armstrong’s one nut (American’s) team into the ground.
