Astana Cycling Team

Next Monday, March 20, at 18 hours, Alberto Contador will attend the launch of a new bicycle rental system by the municipality of Pinto, which comes to highlight the commitment to this means of transport as a clean and recommended way to increase mobility in cities. Nine rental points of these new bikes will be installed. 120 bycicles will be available for use by Pinto’s citizens and visitors.
The presentation ceremony will be held at the downtown Parque de El Ejido, where will also be installed from tomorrow, Saturday 19, a stand of Alberto Contador Foundation with T-shirts and jerseys, as well as a collection point where for the first time used bicycles will be donated to the Contador Foundation. Thus will begin an initiative in which Alberto Contador has high hopes and which he want to send to the Third World countries as many bikes as possible to help sustainable transport in those areas and to use them in Alberto Contador’s Cycling Schools, the first of which will be launched very soon in Pinto.
Anyone who wants to donate a used bicycle could deliver it during this Sunday at the stand installed in the Parque de El Egido and after at the city’s clean point, from where there will be moved to a warehouse that the City Council has given for this use to Alberto Contador Foundation.

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The Astana team retains its first place in the world ranking that was published today by the UCI. The Kazakh team has continuously been in this leading position since June 14 which has been subsequently reinforced by its victory in the Tour de France.

Alberto Contador is still the number one of the individual world ranking followed by Alexander Vinokourov, who is sixth.

In the UCI world ranking for nations, Kazakhstan is ranked as tenth.

Astana Cycling Team
Communication Department.

Sunday, 29th August 2010

Hello from Mijas, a little “white village” between Marbella and Malaga on the Mediterranean sea, where we joined our daughter and beloved grand-children in their new home, following the circuit of the Vuelta.

All photos by Kahane

As Arsen told me some Kazakh fans are interested in knowing more about the team hotel, as well as technical and logistic details, I took many pictures for you all because it was our last day on the Vuelta. But every good thing has an end.

Last night in Sevilla took place a fiesta along the TTT circuit. For a lot of people it was an opportunity to take advantage of the relative coolness (30°C) of the night! The Sevillians were celebrating on a week-end the first ever departure of the Vuelta in their city, and people were singing, dancing, drinking and enjoying life.

The Astana riders were disappointed by their performance but it did not affect too much the team morale. Never look back and concentrate on the future!
After the team time trial, the riders returned to their hotel on their own bikes around midnight, and the soigneurs spent two more hours washing all the outfits in the bus washing machine. Read the rest of this entry →

Saturday 28th August 2010

Third day in Sevilla and it’s getting hotter and hotter! Yesterday it went up to 50°C in the center of the city at 6 PM.

The first thing we saw this morning coming to the hotel entrance was hotel staff sweeping up the broken glass from some more cars which had just been broken into during the night. It seems to be even a bigger sport over here than cycling!!

Chatting with Yvon Sanquer. All photos by Kahane

While waiting for the riders to arrive we chatted with the French General Manager of the team, Yvon Sanquer. He said that he had been very happy with the year’s performance for Astana, and he believes the results made the Kazakh management and the Kazakh population very proud of the team. Read the rest of this entry →

26/08/2010

Hello to all Kazakh supporters of Astana Cycing Team. As some of you don’t know us yet, I am introducing ourselves.

All photos by Kahane

We are a dynamic Parisian retired couple. We have two children and two adorable grand-children who we very often take care of. I am a French born, from Russian-American parents, and my husband Roger, an ex-electronics engineer, is English, from Austrian-born parents, so we are quite international and between the two of us manage to get around in various languages. I worked my whole professional life as a legal assistant in a large international law firm until I was struck with cancer and had to quit a job which I loved at a rather early age.

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Friday 27th August 2010

We had our rental car broken into this morning and our new GPS stolen.  So Roger is a very fed up because he loves his GPS’ melodious English voice called Jane, plus it's difficult to get around here with only a map.

Soigneur Valentin Dorronsoro vacuum cleaning the inside of our car from all the glass pieces

Astana soigneur Valentin Dorronsoro came around with his big vacuum cleaner and removed all the bits and pieces of glass from inside the car, saving us a lot of work, and we had to return the damaged car to Hertz at the airport.  The Omega Pharma Lotto truck was also vandalized.

But we should not let this affect our morale. As they say in French “il vaut mieux ça qu’une jambe de cassé” (better this than a broken leg).   Today our dear grandson Florian turned 10 but it seems that he was born yesterday!, and we saw all the Astana riders leave for their three-hour training at 10 AM.  So I could take another set of good photos. Read the rest of this entry →

You asked me who was that pretty girl on the photos of the team.

This is Blandine Roquelet- press attach of Astana team.

She is the only girl in the team.

Men of the team respect her, love her, take care and pamper her.

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Hello!
Today is Dmitriy Sedoun’s turn.

We have his interview on our site.

Дмитрий Седун: Я настоящий мужчина!

I can confirm after my interaction with Dmitriy that he is a real man.
He is very interesting conversationalist, you can listen to him for hours.
I can also confirm that the sporting director of the team is jack of all trades, especially such as Dmitriy.
Examples are on photos. Read the rest of this entry →