The controversy came about due to team rivalries and how they conflicted with the issues of "etiquette" and "respect" of bike racing.
I've known George Hincapie since he was 10 years old and a teammate of my son's. Now, as veteran competitor in the pro ranks, he is universally liked and respected by the entire peloton. He has won a Tour stage and even wore the Yellow Jersey as race leader a number of years ago. If he rides two more Tours he will hold the record for the most Tours ever ridden by a professional. He is a tremendously talented "all-arounder" meaning he can sprint well, time trial well, and climb acceptably. At 6'4" and 180 pounds, though, he is not a top Tour contender, especially at this stage of his career.
George had served as Lance Armstrong's trusted lieutenant for all of his seven wins in the Tour and there is a strong friendship there as well, even though they no longer are on the same team. George is also now on the Columbia-High Road team, a rival of both Astana (Lance's team) and Garmin-Slipstream (another American team who is fighting for recognition in the Tour). Columbia, whose Tour goal is winning stages has had a great year and a great tour, winning four stages and holding the sprinter's and best young rider's jerseys.
So......with that background here we go. George goes with an early breakaway with a group of riders who are not contenders. The break gains some six minutes on the leaders. Astana gets to the front and rides a "false tempo" to keep the break time in control but let George gain time and move into the Yellow Jersey for a day. The gap goes up to nearly nine minutes. Good, but any chase is the responsibility of the team of the Yellow Jersey, AG2R, not Astana. This AG2R does, but runs out of gas at about a five minute gap. Astana was a bit too concerned with controlling the time gap and should have forced AG2R to chase earlier instead of letting them rest for that first part of the stage. I think that they definitely wanted George in the jersey but were too concerned with keeping the time gap "manageable" (a few years ago a break gained 30 minutes on the leaders and it took Armstrong ten stages to regain the Yellow Jersey from a young French rider who would have never been in contention otherwise).
Now, part two of the drama. Garmin-Slipstream, presumably on the orders of their team manager, goes to the front with ten kilometers to go and pulls the field back into a time where they are only 4:20 behind George's break at the finish. George needed a 4:25 gap to take the jersey. Garmin had no reason to chase as they did other than to spoil the day for George. Their long chase even ruined the chance for their designated sprinter, who was in contention for the Sprinter's Green Jersey to score any points. It was pure revenge on their part to spoil George's and Columbia's day. They gained nothing out of it.
As a final aside to this, Columbia's sprinter, Mark Cavendish, wins the field sprint anyway, despite not getting a normal leadout by his team, who were keeping the pace as controlled as possible in the last two kilometers to give George all the time possible. He then gets relegated to last in the group for "not holding a straight line" at the finish, which turned to the right in the last 50 meters. As a licensed official for over a decade, it was a poor call, IMHO. The relegation eliminated Cavendish from any chance to win the Green Jersey.
It was both a tactical blunder on Astana's part and poor sportsmanship on Garmin's part that cost George the Jersey for the one day before the Alps.
I know that this seems confusing to many traditional sports fans, but the whole drug thing aside in cycling (common in ALL sports, just better policed and penalized in cycling, so we hear more about it) there is an unwritten code of conduct and ethics in cycling that Garmin violated.
