So Astana scrape their way in, huh?

After weeks of speculation in the press, and more rumours than you can shake a spoke at, the UCI have finally confirmed that Ass-t'na are in, but Europcar are out.

On the one hand it's good that Ass-t'na are in the World Tour, as their team contains arguably some of the best riders out there - Contador, Nibali, Sagan, and of course Fuglsang - but it's a bit of a blow that they have not apparently even been punished for having two confirmed dopers on the team, ie the Iglinsky brothers, both of whom have tested positive for EPO.

Both of them have been sacked by the team, and it was hilarious reading Nibali's take on the situation: "I didn't have anything to do with them, they are stupid, I didn't train with them, I barely know them."

Great way to show team spirit, Nibbles.

As an aside, is it worse that the two dopers were related, or better?

I have rather assumed that it's a good thing - if the two brothers were "in it" together,  they could cover for each other, help to hide the stuff, maybe help each other to use it.  Doping is not something you can do alone, you have to buy the stuff, store it, hide the needles etc used to get it into your system, get rid of the waste products: this all takes time, and over the years I have come to realise that riders don't get a lot of privacy - remember that article, with pictures of Andy sitting on the stairs outside the room while his brother entertained his girlfriend? - so I guess if you decide to do it, you might as well rope in your family as accomplices, and presumably whichever brother got roped in to help, thought he might as well get the benefit?

But if it were two separate riders, that would (I think) imply that doping was more widespread. Possibly.  Either way, it's very bad for Astana, and not particularly helpful for cycling in general.

On the subject of "finding a silver lining" at least with Andy being retired, we won't get a wave of "oh look, both Iglinsky brothers were doping, that proves that if one brother dopes, so does the other, and as Frankie doped (Note: technically, Frankie did not dope, he was found to have a banned product in his blood but he still maintains he does not know how it got there) then Andy, being his brother, must also have doped" rubbish.

Sigh. At least we have been spared that.

And meanwhile, poor old Europcar didn't quite make it, due to lack of funding: they say "it was only a 6% shortfall!" but the UCI said it was a "substantial" shortfall: as always, we never quite get the full story from anyone. I assume that if Europcar were going to continue to sponsor (you will remember that they have just said they are leaving at the end of 2015), then the team would have found a way to make up the missing money, but with the main sponsor leaving, well, I can see that it would be hard to get the smaller sponsors to cough up a bit extra. This is such a shame, we shall miss Tommy "I Talk To Myself" Voeckler and his mad face-pulling. Presumably we'll see them in the Tour, but they won't necessarily be at any of the other races. Shame.

It look as though it's going to be a smaller peloton next year - only 17 teams applied for World Tour licences, and of those, Europcar didn't get it, so by my reckoning there will only be 16.

They are,  according to Cycing News:

Sky,  Ag2r La Mondiale, Astana -  come on Jakob, jump ship! - BMC Racing, Cannondale, FDJ, Katusha, Lampre-Merida, Lotto NL, Lotto-Soudal, (is it me, or is it daft to have two Lotto teams?) Movistar, Omega Pharma-QuickStep, Orica-GreenEdge,  Giant-Alpecin, Tinkoff-Saxo and Trek Factory Racing.


In the next few weeks we should start to see photos of new kits appearing, so I'll try to keep up to date on who is wearing what: and of course, soon after Christmas we'll have the Tour Down Under to look forward to!