When Johan Bruyneel, Alberto Contador, Levi Leipheimer and many of their Discovery Channel colleagues switched allegiance to the Astana team last fall they knew there was a risk that their new team might be excluded from events organized Amaury Sport Organisation — including the 2008 Tour de France.

Now that ASO has done just that, we aren’t surprised, but like UCI president Pat McQuaid, we “can’t understand” the logic of ASO bosses Patrice Clerc and Christian Prudhomme’s decision.

The Tour owners say it is dis-inviting the totally revamped Astana team because it was born out of the totally discredited Astana 2007 (which pulled out of the Tour when team leader Alexander Vinokourov was convicted of blood doping), which evolved from Astana 2006 (excluded from the Tour at the last minute because of riders named on the Operación Puerto black list), which emerged from the ashes of Team Würth/Liberty Seguros once owned by the “busted” Spanish team director Manolo Saiz.

ASO’s logic is two strikes and you’re out — despite Astana 2008 engaging the independent and stringent medical-testing services of Danish anti-doping czar Dr. Rasmus Damsgaard. By the same logic, Clerc and Prudhomme should be barred from organizing bike races because the Vinokourov doping scandal happened at their event — after the ASO duo had hand-picked Astana for last year’s Tour. Prudhomme now regrets that decision, telling AFP on Wednesday, “We gave them our confidence, invited them to the Tour. We have recognized that we made a mistake in taking them. We don’t want to make the same mistake twice in a row.”

Should the ASO decision stand up, and should Bruyneel’s Astana team not start this year’s Tour, then not only will defending champ Contador and potential winners Leipheimer and Andreas Klöden be deprived of their chances at further Tour glory, but the Tour itself will lose even more of its credibility.

That point was echoed by Bruyneel, who said in a prepared statement: “Unfortunately, the Tour de France will lose now much of its credibility by not letting participate some of the world’s best riders, who were never implicated in doping scandals.”

The 2007 Tour runner-up Cadel Evans has already said that he does not want to start the Tour without his main rivals. Also, both the pro teams’ association and the pro riders’ union indicated last week that they are prepared to boycott this year’s Giro d’Italia should the organizers not accept Astana and other UCI ProTour teams to the Italian grand tour. It’s likely they will now threaten to boycott the Tour. If that is the case, then there will be open warfare between the sport’s major players — that could only be resolved by arbitration.

Also, the Tour and the other events organized by ASO, along with those run by the Giro’s RCS and the Vuelta a España’s Unipublic are not yet included on any official calendar for 2008. And there remains a dispute between ASO and the UCI on the formula of choosing teams for the Tour: The UCI insists that all 18 ProTour teams must participate, while ASO wants the right of refusal.

Clearly, ASO is playing with fire. It will take cool heads to extinguish the flames.