Astana To Lose Worldtour Licence

[steve]

News website around the internet are reporting what we all apparently knew SHOULD happen;




Astana to lose WorldTour licence, report suggests
Astana will be stripped of its WorldTour licence, according to Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, with the UCI’s licence commission set to announce its decision on April 2.

In February, the sport’s governing body recommended that the Kazakh squad’s licence be withdrawn following an audit on the team’s policies and structures were different to those presented to the licence commission in December.

De Telegraaf reports that a senior person within the UCI revealed to the paper that the decision was made on March 20, two days before Milan-San Remo. While the news has not been officially confirmed, if true it means Astana will only be able to apply for a third-tier Continental licence.
Read more at http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/astana-to-lose-worldtour-licence-report-suggests-164397

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Report: Astana to lose WorldTour licence

According to De Telegraaf, a senior official from the UCI informed the newspaper that the team can only apply for a Continental licence, the third tier of professional cycling after the decision was made on March 20 to revoke the licence.

The UCI Licence Commission is scheduled to meet on April 2 to decide on the future of Astana as a WorldTour team.
LInk: http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/report-astana-to-lose-worldtour-licence

 

[steve]

Team Astana hasn't been very good at keeping it's drug ****ed ness under wraps, the following is a list of the dope taking we know about. If you know more.... post it.

Doping @ Astana thanks to wikipedia

• The team recorded its first doping positive in April, 2007, when Matthias Kessler tested positive for testosterone.
• In July, 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.
• On the eve of the 2007 Tour de France, Alexander Vinokourov confirmed he had received coaching from controversial doctor Michele Ferrari.
• The next positive doping result came from team-leader Vinokourov, after a positive result for blood doping (blood transfusion). As a result, ASO (the organisers of the Tour de France "invited" Team Astana's management to withdraw the entire team from the 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 1 August 2007, 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.
• 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.

Now throwing the team into the gutter we will...set up for the future

• Following the doping problems of 2007, the sponsors of Astana replaced 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 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.

• On 13 February 2008, the organisers of the both the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France announce that Astana would be barred from their 2008 Grand Tours, due to the teams 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.
• One week before the 2008 Giro d'Italia, the organisers go on to invite the team to the race, a race which Alberto Contador would go on to win. In July, Vladimir Gusev is sacked by the team due to "irregular values" highlighted by the teams new, internal, anti-doping system.

France Neilstrong invents cycling

• Lance dodges dope testing and returns to cycling before he legally should be allowed to.
• In 2009, after returning from retirement, Lance Armstrong is accused by the French anti-doping agency of acting improperly by disappearing from the sight of the anti-doping invesitgator for 20 minutes.
• In June, Assan Bazayev is given a two week internal suspension for not correctly reporting his whereabouts properly.

You got a beef wif this?

• In September 2010, Alberto Contador returned a positive doping test for Clenbuterol at the 2010 Tour de France. After a two year legal procedure, Contador is stripped of his 2010 Tour de France win (and 2011 Giro d'Italia victory).

Not in our flock

• In 2011, Roman Kreuziger finished 5th at the Giro d'Italia as well as winning the best young rider classification. In 2014, the UCI began proceedings against him for biological passport anaomalies dated from 2011 and 2012 – the two years he spent at Astana.

An American conspiracy driven by big pharma ...strong.

• In 2012, former Astana riders and staff including; Lance Armstrong, Johan Bruyneel, Levi Leipheimer, Dr. Pedro Celaya and Dr. Luis del Moral are heavily implicated in the mass doping scandal which surrounded the U.S. Postal /Discovery Channel team.

Now...

• In September 2014, it emerged that Valentin Iglinskiy has returned a positive test for EPO [41] at the Eneco Tour, he confessed to doping to the team and was immediately sacked.
• Three weeks later Valentin's brother, Maxim Iglinskiy was provisionally suspended by the UCI for an EPO-positive on August 1.
• It was later announced that Astana withdrew themselves from the Tour of Beijing per the MPCC rules, who state that a team with 2 positives in a short period of time must not participate in the next World Tour event.

Astana to lose WorldTour licence......

 

[mpre53]

Guess again.

 

[swampy1970]

Landa - what orange juice was he drinking at the Giro? Sunny D or Ferrari?

 

[mpre53]

Supposed to be a decision from the CSA on Kreuziger any day now, too.

 

[Corzhens]

Is that another doping incident? In our local scene, sports had suffered a lot a few years back when several athletes in varied disciplines were proved to have been using energy-enhancing drugs. What makes it a bad picture is that those users are young and promising. On a good note for cycling, there was no cyclist involved in the scandal.

 

[kylerlittle]

That's really sad, I grieve when I see that.

 

[mpre53]

Kreuzinger was ordered suspended by UCI and WADA due to suspicious results in his biological passport. which, basically, monitors certain blood value indicators that doping affects. It's considered to be anti-doping's gold standard in detection. He appealed, and offered his own expert's explanation for the abnormalities, which he argued were due to certain medications he was prescribed that are not on the banned substance list. For reasons that were not disclosed, both the UCI (cycling's governing body) and WADA (the world anti-doping agency) dropped their opposition to his appeal several days ago.