Vinokurov presented «Astana» cycling team lineup for 2017
Before the official part of the event Alexander Vinokurov, the General Manager of "Astana" shared memories of the most significant moments of the ended season and told about some changes in the team.
"I believe it has been a very successful season. We won the well-known supermulti-day race "Giro d' Italy" with Vincenzo Nibali. In total we had 34 victories and 30 winning places in the world's highest level races. 7 victories and 4 prize-winning places were taken by Kazakhstan cyclists. Now that the season is over, it is time we should look into the future. I am confident to say that our project is developing. In 2017 "Astana" will have big changes in the line-up, uniform, bicycles. We are sure that all these changes will lead to a new round of development. Today, we will represent the edited lineup in order, - Alexander Vinokurov told.
New bicycles of "Astana" from "Argon 18" company and uniform of turquoise color designed by Giordana company were presented to the guests and public.
Alexander Vinokurov told about about the purposes of the team for the future season:
- Traditionally, "Astana" focuses on successful performance in grand tours. It is our strength. During the entire history of the project we have won 8 supermulti-day races, and we will strive for new achievements. In team we have a strong leader - Fabio Ara, and a number of young but very ambitious racers who are quite able to surprise. There will be local cyclists in the team, too, such as Alexey Lutsenko, Andrey Zeyts, Dmitry Gruzdev and Bakhtiar Kozhatayev who will race in the grand tours. Perhaps, Daniil Fominykh and Artem Zakharov will participate too. However, other than grand tours in the new calendar of world tours there are a lot more prestigious competitions which will also be aimed at by "Astana" - the traditional week-long races and "classical season" races, - Alexander Vinokurov shared.
The complete team lineup was present in the presentation ceremony except for Miguel Angel Lopez who got a leg injury.
In 2017 there will 28 cyclists from nine countries of the world (Kazakhstan, Italy, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, Ukraine, Estonia, Colombia, Russia) will perform within "Astana" cycling team: Fabio Ara, Zhandos Bizhigitov, Pelyo Bilbao, Matti Breshel, Michael Walgren, Oskar Gateaux, Andrey Grivko, Dmitry Gruzdev, Laurens De Vriz, Artem Zakharov, Andrey Zeyts, Arman Kamyshev, Dario Cataldo, Tanel Kangert, Bakhtiar Kozhatayev, Miguel Angel Lopez, Alexey Lutsenko, Riccardo Minali, Moreno Mozer, Luis Leon Sanchez, Michele Scarponi, Nikita Stalnov, Paolo Tiralongo, Ruslan Tleubayev, Daniil Fominykh, Jacob Fulsang, Yesper Hansen and Sergey Chernetsky.