Astana (cycling team)

Teamname	Astana
Code	AST
Base	2007 2008 2009
Founded	2007
Bicycles	Specialized Bicycle Components
Manager	Yvon Sanquer
Discipline	Road
Status	ProTour
Season	2007-
Oldname	Astana
Kitimage	150px-Trikot Team Astana 2010.png
Current	2010 Astana season

Astana () is a professional road bicycle racing team sponsored by the Astana group, a coalition of state-owned companies from Kazakhstan and named after its capital city Astana. Astana attained UCI ProTeam status in its inaugural year, 2007. Following a major doping scandal involving Kazakhstani rider Alexander Vinokourov, team management was terminated and new management brought in for the 2008 season. The team was then managed by Johan Bruyneel, former team manager of U.S. Postal/Discovery Channel team. Although Astana under Bruyneel was very successful, with a lineup including Grand Tour winners Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong, as well as runners-up Levi Leipheimer and Andreas Klöden, the team was on the verge of financial collapse in May 2009. A battle for control of the team related to the return of Vinokourov for the 2009 Vuelta a España caused Bruyneel and at least fourteen of its riders to leave at the end of the 2009 season, most for . Only four Spanish riders, including Contador, and most of the Kazakhs remained with the rebuilt team for 2010.

History

Demise of Liberty Seguros-Würth

Astana first became involved in sponsoring cycling during the 2006 season. The Liberty Seguros-Würth team was heavily implicated in the Operación Puerto doping case and the sponsors Liberty Mutual, and later Würth, withdrew their sponsorship of the team. Astana stepped in to sponsor the team, and during the second half of the season, Vinokourov won the Vuelta a España while riding for the renamed Team Astana, and his Kazakh teammate Andrey Kashechkin finished third.

New team

The new Astana management initially tried to buy the ProTour licence of the former Liberty Seguros-Würth team, held by Manolo Saiz. However, Saiz was reluctant to sell, so Astana applied for a licence in their own right. Initially, the new team was based in Switzerland under the holding company of Zeus Sarl and managed by former Tour de Suisse organiser Marc Biver. Vinokourov was the team's debut leader.

The UCI ProTour license commission first informed Astana that they would not be granted a ProTour License for the 2007 season. Following UCI's decision not to grant a ProTour license, the organizers of the three Grand Tours informed Astana Team that they would be included, regardless of ProTour license status. On December 20, 2006 the UCI License Commission relented and awarded Astana Team a 4-year ProTour license.

Other prominent new riders for the 2007 season included stage race specialists Andreas Klöden, Paolo Savoldelli and Andrey Kashechkin, as well as Matthias Kessler, Grégory Rast, Thomas Frei and Spanish climber Antonio Colom.

2007

Doping Issues

In April, Matthias Kessler tested positive for testosterone following a surprise control in Charleroi. The former Team T-Mobile rider who had won a Tour de France stage in 2006, was fired in July, and would turn out to be the first of a number of Astana-riders to be tested positive. Later in July, yet another former T-Mobile cyclist, Italian Eddy Mazzoleni, left the team after allegations of doping usage. Mazzoleni, who had finished 3rd in the 2007 Giro d'Italia, was later suspended for two years for his alleged involvement in the Oil for Drugs doping case.

After a positive blood doping (transfusion) test following the winning time-trial by team-leader Alexander Vinokourov, organisers "invited" Team Astana's management to withdraw the entire team from the 2007 Tour de France; this invitation was immediately accepted.

Following confirmation that Vinokourov's B-sample had also tested positive, the Astana Team announced that he had been sacked with immediate effect. On August 1, fellow Kazakh Andrey Kashechkin tested positive for homologous blood doping following an out-of-competition test in Belek, Turkey. He was suspended and subsequently fired as well.

Additionally, the troubled team decided to suspend its activities during the month of August to decide about its future with new regulations.

This was followed by the termination of José Antonio Redondo's contract after "failing to abide by team rules", making him the fifth rider of the team to leave during the 2007 season.

2008

Following the doping problems of 2007, the sponsors of Astana decided to replace Biver with Johan Bruyneel, the former directeur sportif of the defunct Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team. Bruyneel had the mandate to start afresh with the team, so he hired a number of former Discovery riders including 2007 Tour de France winner Alberto Contador (who had ridden with Vinokourov on the old Liberty Seguros team) and third-place finisher Levi Leipheimer. Additionally, Bruyneel introduced the anti-doping system developed by Dr. Rasmus Damsgaard, Head of Information for Anti Doping Danmark (ADD). The anti-doping system was initially used by Team CSC starting in 2007. The link between the Discovery Channel team and Astana was strengthened when Bruyneel signed a contract with Trek Bicycle Corporation to supply the team with bicycles and components, as they had done with Discovery Channel. Bruyneel also affirmed sponsorship with SRAM, the component maker.

Riding under a Luxembourgian license, the team also included other ex-Discovery Channel riders such as Tomas Vaitkus, Sérgio Paulinho, Chechu Rubiera, Vladimir Gusev and Janez Brajkovic, as well as American Chris Horner. However, former Discovery Channel rider Savoldelli left the team.

On February 13, 2008, the organisers of the Tour de France announced that Astana would be barred from the 2008 Tour due to its links to Operación Puerto and involvement in the 2007 Tour doping scandals. This meant that Contador was unable to defend his Tour crown, because his contract does not have an "escape clause" that covered Astana's current situation.

Results

The Astana team was also not invited to the 2008 Giro d'Italia. However, on May 3, one week before the start of the race, Giro organizers chose to extend a last-minute invitation to Astana. Astana was able to field a team despite the short notice, and on 1 June, Alberto Contador won the Giro, finishing 11th on the final stage time trial to keep his pink jersey and take the overall victory. Contador also won the 2008 Vuelta a España, with teammate Levi Leipheimer finishing a close second. Thus, despite not competing in the Tour de France, Astana still won two Grand Tours in 2008 and achieved three podiums. Leipheimer also won a bronze medal in the time trial in the 2008 Olympics, just edging Contador, who finished fourth.

Among the other results achieved by the team were victories in several stage races: by Contador in the Vuelta al País Vasco and the Vuelta a Castilla y León, by Leipheimer in the Tour of California, by Klöden in the Tour de Romandie and by Russian Sergei Ivanov in the Tour de Wallonie. Various team members also achieved several other top-tier results, and Ivanov, Paulinho, Vaikus and two of the Kazakhs won their national championships.

Astana's strict anti-doping policy came to the forefront later in the year. On July 28 Astana fired Vladimir Gusev for showing "abnormal values" in an internal doping check. In a release from team director Johan Bruyneel it was indicated that although the results "do not indicate the use of banned substances, the team has therefore applied the contractual terms based on these physiological and biological abnormalities", dismissing Gusev "with immediate effect." On June 17, 2009, almost a year later, the Court of Arbitration in Sport ruled that Astana was wrong to fire Gusev based on Dr. Damsgaard's interpretation of blood values and ordered Astana to pay Gusev back wages, damages and legal costs.

2009

Return of Lance Armstrong

On 25 September 2008, it was confirmed that seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong would leave retirement to ride for the team in the 2009 season. Along with Armstrong, Yaroslav Popovych, another former Discovery Channel rider, joined the ranks of Astana, which brought the number of former Discovery Channel riders on Astana to nine (Armstrong, Popovych, Contador, Leipheimer, Rubiera, Noval, Vaitkus, Paulinho and Brajkovič).

It was reported that Armstrong would share team leadership with current leader Contador, that he intended to participate in the Tour Down Under, the Tour of California, Paris–Nice, the Tour de Georgia, the Critérium du Dauphiné Liberé and the Tour de France, and that he would receive no salary or bonuses, instead directing his attention to raising awareness for cancer research.

Along with Armstrong and Popovych, Astana also signed Jesús Hernández, who had joined the former Liberty Seguros team in 2004 when Alberto Contador was one of the riders there, and Basque rider Haimar Zubeldia. Contador expressed his support for the return of Vinokourov from his two-year doping suspension but seemed less enthusiastic about Armstrong's return.

Armstrong was part of the team that participated in the season's first ProTour race, the 2009 Tour Down Under. The team's first victory of the season was the 6th stage, followed by the general classification, of the Tour of California by Levi Leipheimer. In the same week, Alberto Contador won a stage and the classification of the Volta ao Algarve, and subsequently two stages in the Paris–Nice race.

Armstrong's participation in the Tour was cast into doubt in late March, after he suffered a broken collarbone in the Vuelta a Castilla y León that required surgical repair. However, Armstrong was able to recover in time to ride in the 2009 Giro d'Italia.

Financial crisis

On 6 May 2009 Astana admitted that it had failed to pay its riders amid the financial crisis in Kazakhstan, but a team spokesman said that this was only a delay, that the team was not in danger of folding, and that the team would compete in the 2009 Giro d'Italia as planned. On 7 May Armstrong, riding for Astana on an unpaid basis, expressed his sympathy for employees waiting for their wages only days before the start of the Giro d'Italia. He also said that if the financial crisis was not resolved, the team's license should be turned over to Bruyneel, which he said was the "most logical solution."

Organizationally, Astana has an unusual structure. Although the Kazakh team holds the UCI license and pays the salaries, the individual rider contracts and equipment leases are held by Bruyneel's Luxembourg-based Olympus SARL, so the team could continue with merely a license transfer. UCI President Pat McQuaid is planning a visit to Astana during the Giro to discuss the team's future. According to Armstrong: "I don't have any concrete answers but I suspect we can find some funding that would get us from June to the end of the year."

During stage 7 of the Giro, eight of the nine Astana riders, including Armstrong, rode in jerseys with the non-paying sponsors' names nearly faded out in protest over the team's unpaid salaries and remained in such jerseys for the rest of the Giro. The only rider not to participate was Andrey Zeits from Kazakhstan. According to Bruyneel, the names of paying sponsors, such as Trek and KazMunayGas, were not blanked out, and the team would continue to "race with these shirts until everything, emphasis on everything, is fixed", as "the riders have only received two months of salary in 2009." On 19 May, Bruyneel announced that the sponsors have paid part of the past-due wages since the start of the protest "but the major part is still missing." On 3 June the Astana team gave financial guarantees to cycling's governing body which will allow them to compete in the 2009 Tour de France in July, and later that month declared their financial problems to be resolved and the funds secure at least to the end of the season.

Vinokourov versus Bruyneel

During these financial problems, it was rumored that three of the former Discovery Channel riders on the team - team leader Contador and his domestiques Noval and Paulinho - would join Garmin-Slipstream for the Tour de France if Armstrong were to take over the Astana team. These problems seemed to be resolved, at least for the remainder of 2009, when the team's funding was resolved. However, the funding battle may have been merely a skirmish related to the underlying issue: control of the Astana team after the expiration of the two-year doping suspension of Alexander Vinokourov on July 24, 2009.

On 2 July, Vinokourov stated that he would return to Astana, which he noted was "created for me and thanks to my efforts", when his suspension ended, and that he would ride for Astana in the 2009 Vuelta a España. He stated that he expected to reach agreement with Bruyneel about his return within the week, but that "if Bruyneel does not want me, it will be Bruyneel who is leaving the team." The next day, the French newspaper L'Equipe reported that the Kazakh Cycling Federation planned to fire Bruyneel, Armstrong, Leipheimer and many of the other riders and rebuild the team in the model of the old Liberty Seguros team, which was predominantly Spanish. The paper quoted the vice-president of the Kazakh federation as saying, "[Contador] will be our sole leader for years to come [and] will be able to pick out the riders he wants to ride with him. In our mind, the team will be composed of Spanish and Kazakh riders, including Alexander Vinokourov."

On 21 July, with Contador, Armstrong and Klöden holding three of the top four places in the Tour de France, Bruyneel told Belgian channel VRT that Astana as currently constituted was "finished" and that he would be leaving the team, as Vinokourov and the Kazakh federation had discussed, at the end of the season. Despite the comments by Vinokourov and the Kazakhstan federation, Bruyneel and Vinokourov did not reach an agreement regarding Vinokourov's return to Astana for 2009, and the team submitted a preliminary roster to the 2009 Vuelta a España listing him only as a reserve. Finally, on 24 August, Astana announced that an agreement had been reached between Vinokourov and Bruyneel and that Vinokourov would rejoin the team for the start of the Vuelta. The next day, Armstrong announced that Bruyneel would take over Team RadioShack in 2010.

2010

The immediate result of Vinokourov's return and Bruyneel's departure was a mass exodus from Astana. Although Bruyneel still had a year to run on his contract, Astana permitted his departure in return for him not blocking Vinokourov's return. Contador also has a year on his contract, and Astana refused to permit his departure. However, much of the rest of the team departed for RadioShack, including Armstrong, Klöden, Leipheimer, Zubeldia, Horner, Brajkovič, Popovych, Paulinho, Vaitkus, Rast, Rubiera and Muravyev (the only Kazakh to depart), which meant that eight of the nine members of the winning Astana team at the 2009 Tour de France moved to RadioShack. Additionally, Schär and Morabito joined . All that remained of Astana was four Spanish riders (Contador, Noval, Navarro and Hernández) and the Kazakhs (except Muravyev). Since then, the team has signed three more Spanish riders, including 2006 Tour champion Óscar Pereiro, to support Contador. Consistent with the July 2009 plan, the 2010 team includes 12 Kazakhstanis and 7 Spaniards among its 26 riders.

Major achievements

2007

1st, Team classification, 2007 Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré (2007 UCI ProTour)

1st, Team classification, 2007 Jayco Herald Sun Tour (2007-2008 UCI Oceania Tour)

1st, Overall, Tour de Luxembourg - - Grégory Rast + 1 stage

1st, Overall, Tirreno–Adriatico - Andreas Klöden

1st, Overall, Circuit de la Sarthe-Pays de la Loire - Andreas Klöden + 1 stage

2nd, Overall, Tour de Romandie - Paolo Savoldelli + 1 stage

3rd, Overall, Tour de Romandie - Andrey Kashechkin

3rd, Overall, Giro d'Italia - Eddy Mazzoleni

3rd, Overall, Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré - Andrey Kashechkin

3rd, Overall, Tirreno–Adriatico - Alexandre Vinokourov

National champions: Benoît Joachim - Road Race Maxim Iglinsky - Road Race

2008

1st, Overall, Vuelta a España - Alberto Contador + 2 stages

2nd, Overall, Vuelta a España - Levi Leipheimer + 2 stages

1st, Overall, Giro d'Italia - Alberto Contador

1st, Overall, Tour of California - Levi Leipheimer + 1 stage

1st, Overall, Vuelta al País Vasco - Alberto Contador + 2 stages

1st, Overall, Tour de Romandie - Andreas Klöden + 1 stage

1st, Overall, Vuelta a Castilla y León - Alberto Contador + 2 stages

1st, Overall, Tour de Wallonie - Serguei Ivanov

1st, Ronde van het Groene Hart - Tomas Vaitkus

1st, Clásica a los Puertos de Guadarrama - Levi Leipheimer

1st, Cascade Classic - Levi Leipheimer

2nd, Overall, Tour de Suisse - Andreas Klöden

3rd, Overall, Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré - Levi Leipheimer

3rd, Overall, Deutschland Tour - Janez Brajkovic

3rd, Overall, Tour de Belgique - Serguei Ivanov

3rd, Overall, Volta ao Algarve - Tomas Vaitkus

3rd, Overall, Volta ao Distrito de Santarém - Andreas Klöden

3rd, Overall, Driedaagse van West-Vlaanderen - Serguei Ivanov

3rd, Overall, Vuelta a Murcia - Alberto Contador

3rd, Overall, Tour de Georgia - Levi Leipheimer

4th, Overall, Tour de Georgia - Antonio Colóm

2nd, Overall Österreich-Rundfahrt - Vladimir Gusev

2nd, Giro di Lombardia - Janez Brajkovic

2nd, Clásica a los Puertos de Guadarrama - Alberto Contador

Stage wins:

Stage 1, Tour de Romandie - Maxim Iglinsky

Stage 2, Volta ao Algarve - Tomas Vaitkus

Stage 2, Vuelta a Murcia - Chechu Rubiera

Stage 5, Österreich-Rundfahrt - René Haselbacher

National champions: Serguei Ivanov - Road Race Vladimir Gusev - Time Trial Assan Bazayev - Road Race Andrey Mizourov - Time Trial Tomas Vaitkus - Road Race Sérgio Paulinho - Time Trial

2009

1st, Overall, Tour de France - Alberto Contador + 2 stages

3rd, Overall, Tour de France - Lance Armstrong

1st, Overall, Vuelta al País Vasco - Alberto Contador + 2 stages

1st, Overall, Tour of California - Levi Leipheimer + 1 stage

1st, Overall, Vuelta a Castilla y León - Levi Leipheimer + 1 stage

1st, Overall, Volta ao Algarve - Alberto Contador + 1 stage

2nd, Overall, Vuelta a Castilla y León - Alberto Contador

2nd, Overall, Tour de Luxembourg - Andreas Klöden

2nd, Overall, Giro del Trentino - Janez Brajkovič

3rd, Overall, Tirreno–Adriatico - Andreas Klöden + 1 stage

3rd, E3 Prijs Vlaanderen - Maxim Iglinsky

3rd, Overall, Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré - Alberto Contador

4th, Overall, Paris–Nice - Alberto Contador + 2 stages

4th, Overall, Tour de Suisse - Andreas Klöden

1st, Team Classification, Tour de France + 1 stage

1st, Team classification, Tour of California

1st, Team classification, Volta a Catalunya

1st, Team classification, Giro D'Italia

1st, Team classification, Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré

Stage wins:

Stage 1, Tour de Luxembourg - Grégory Rast

Stage 1, Giro del Trentino - Andreas Klöden

Stage 4, Tour de France (Team Time Trial)

Stage 6, Tour of California - Levi Leipheimer

Stage 15, Tour de France - Alberto Contador

Stage 18 (ITT), Tour de France - Alberto Contador

National champions: Alberto Contador - Time Trial Janez Brajkovic - Time Trial

2010

1st, Overall, Tour de France - Alberto Contador

1st, Liège–Bastogne–Liège - Alexander Vinokourov

1st, Montepaschi Strade Bianche - Maxim Iglinsky

1st, Overall, Volta ao Algarve - Alberto Contador + 1 stage

1st, Overall, Paris–Nice - Alberto Contador + 1 stage

1st, Overall, Vuelta a Castilla y León - Alberto Contador + 1 stage

1st, Overall, Giro del Trentino - Alexander Vinokourov + 1 stage

1st, Tour de France - Stage 13 Rodez-Revel - Alexander Vinokourov

2010 team roster

As of February 2010.

References

External links

UCI Team Profile

Category:UCI ProTour teams