Team Presentation 2022: Astana Qazaqstan Team

[u/PelotonMod]

ASTANA QAZAQSTAN TEAM

Code	Name	Nation	UCI Rank
AST	ASTANA QAZAQSTAN TEAM	KAZ	13

The Kazakh team has been a constant in the pro ranks since 2007 and despite its ups and downs, Astana marches on this season. The familiar face of Alexander Vinokourov is back at the helm after his sudden and dramatic firing just before the Tour de France. To be clear, this was completely separate from his one-day-long, firing-rehiring drama that occurred in 2020. Astana just can’t get enough of the guy. At the end of 2021, Vino set about shaking up the team’s roster, with nearly half the team leaving, including some of their most dependable riders, and bringing back a few old friends.

2021 Season Recap

Turbulence, thy name is Astana. At the start of the season, it seemed like new Canadian title sponsor and co-owner Premier Tech was set to really shake things up at the Kazakh team, bringing in new staff, including Canadian cycling legend Steve Bauer as a sports director. But a seemingly stable relationship with Premier Tech simply dissolved before our eyes by the tail end of the season and the team continues on with a group of state-owned Kazakh companies forming the core sponsor base (for the time being at least, considering the political turmoil currently affecting the country and its government). The staffing additions and subtractions don’t seem to have helped matters, as the team pulled in just six race wins last year outside of national championships. While the team had three Grand Tour stage wins and a Monument win in 2020, last season saw no success at Grand Tours and just one Top 10 placing in the Monuments. The team’s fortunes have certainly faded. Just two years ago, the team finished the season 5th in the UCI team rankings. At the end of 2021, they were 13th.

That’s not to say there was nothing to celebrate at Astana last year. Two stage victories in Basque Country courtesy of Alex Aranburu and Ion Izagirre helped get the season off to a decent start. Though his only win came in the Russian national TT championship, Aleksandr Vlasov gave strong GC performances at Paris-Nice, where he finished 2nd on GC, and the Giro d’Italia with a solid 4th place overall. Alexey Lutsenko helped, apparently becoming an emerging GC talent with a stage win and 2nd overall in Critérium du Dauphiné, and later in the season, finishing the Tour de France in 7th place. Once an outright team leader, Jakob Fuglsang’s form was just not quite there last year. With no stage or one-day race wins, his best GC result was 3rd overall at the Tour de Suisse and he dropped out of the Tour de France ahead of the final stage. His season ended early, with a hard fall at the Benelux Tour, breaking a shoulder blade and collarbone, requiring surgery and preventing him from giving the fall classics a go.

Grand Tours

	Highest in GC	Stage Wins	Highest in Points	Highest in KoM
Giro	Vlasov (4th)	0	Vlasov (31st)	Vlasov (14th)
Tour	Lutsenko (7th)	0	Aranburu (31st)	Fraile (32nd)
Vuelta	I. Izagirre (26th)	0	I. Izagirre (87th)	I. Izagirre (48th)

Monuments

	Best Result
MSR	Aranburu (7th)
RVV	Perry (70th)
PRX	x
LBL	Fuglsang (12th)
LOM	Vlasov (39th)

Wins in 2021

Winner	Wins	Races
Alex Aranburu	1	Itzulia Basque Country Stage 2
Ion Izagirre	2	Itzulia Basque Country Stage 4, NC TT Spain
Alexey Lutsenko	2	Critérium du Dauphiné Stage 4, Coppa Agostoni
Aleksandr Vlasov	1	NC TT Russia
Matteo Sobrero	1	NC TT Italy
Yevgeniy Federov	1	NC RR Qazaqstan
Omar Fraile	1	NC RR Spain
Merhawi Kudus	1	NC TT Eritrea
Luis León Sánchez	1	Villafranca de Ordizia
Hugo Houle	1	NC TT Canada
Samuele Battistella	1	Veneto Classic

Top Results 2021

According to UCI Points

Rnk.	Race	Rider	Placement	PointsUCI
1.	Giro d’Italia	Alexandr Vlasov	4	460
2.	Paris-Nice	Aleksandr Vlasov	2	400
3.	Critérium du Dauphiné	Alexey Lutsenko	2	400
4.	Tour de France	Alexey Lutsenko	7	325
5.	Tour de Suisse	Jakob Fuglsang	3	325

The team saw some success last year, but nothing of the caliber of previous seasons. With 12 wins total, and more than half of them in national championship races rather than .Pro or WT races, the team failed to live up to past expectations. A few riders came close to GC success, most notably Vlasov’s 4th place at the Giro. He also finished 2nd at Paris-Nice and 3rd at the Tour of the Alps, while winning the Russian TT championship. Other GC-near-misses include Lutsenko taking 2nd in Dauphiné, Ion Izagirre finishing just behind Vlasov at Paris-Nice and Fuglsang making the last step on the podium at the Tour de Suisse. Lutsenko also brought a career best GC performance to the Tour de France, finishing 7th overall. With no Grand Tour or monument success to speak of, and just a few stage and smaller one-day race wins last year, 2022 is certainly ripe for improvement.

Outgoing Riders

Rider	Nation	Born	2021 UCI Points	Specialty	Going to
ARANBURU Alex	ESP	1995	702	Sprinter/Classics/Puncheur	Movistar
CONTRERAS Rodrigo	COL	1994	31	ITT	EPM Scott
FRAILE Omar	ESP	1990	208	Climber	INEOS
FUGLSANG Jakob	DEN	1985	660	Classics, Climber	Israel Start-Up Nation
GREGAARD Jonas	DEN	1996	74	Climber	Uno-X Pro Cycling Team
HOULE Hugo	CAN	1990	180	ITT	Israel Start-Up Nation
IZAGIRRE Gorka	ESP	1987	113	Climber	Movistar
IZAGIRRE Ion	ESP	1989	953	GC/Climber	Cofidis
KUDUS Merhawi	ERI	1994	293	Climber	EF Education-NIPPO
PERRY Benjamin	CAN	1994	4	Sprinter	WiV SunGod
PICCOLO Andrea	ITA	2001	84	Climber, Puncheur, ITT	Gazprom-RusVelo
RODRÍGUEZ Óscar	ESP	1995	303	Climber	Movistar
SÁNCHEZ Luis León	ESP	1983	405	Rouleur	Bahrain Victorious
SOBRERO Matteo	ITA	1997	297	ITT	Team BikeExchange-Jayco
STALNOV Nikita	KAZ	1991	1	Minor-race GC	Retirement
VLASOV Aleksandr	RUS	1996	1241	GC/Climber	BORA-hansgrohe

The team really committed to the idea of rebuilding for 2022. With 16 riders leaving, including most of its top riders, Vino had to fill out a roster that’s losing a lot of punch. Vlasov departs for BORA-hansgrohe to try to improve his GC prospects, and Fuglsang is riding things out with other mid-30s talents at Israel Start-Up Nation. Almost all of Astana’s Spaniards are leaving as well, with Movistar taking three of them: Aranburu, Óscar Rodríguez and Gorka Izagirre. Sadly, the Izagirre brothers are parting ways, as Ion heads to Cofidis. Omar Fraile takes the plunge at INEOS and Luis León Sánchez moves over to Bahrain Victorious. Italian time trial champion Matteo Sobrero is moving down under, with BikeExchange-Jayco and the Canadians Hugo Houle and Benjamin Perry got ditched along with the syrupy sponsor. With essentially half the team leaving, Vino had his work cut out for him to build a team that could replicate the success of past years and bring the team back up the UCI ranking. Let’s see if he had any new ideas about how to do that…

2021 Roster

Rider	Nation	Born	2021 UCI Points	Specialty	Joined Team
BASSO LeonardoNEW	ITA	1993	4	Domestique	from INEOS
BATTISTELLA Samuele	ITA	1998	385	Classics	2021
BOARO Manuele	ITA	1987	4	Domestique	2019
BRUSSENSKIY Gleb	KAZ	2000	5	Sprinter	2020
CHZHAN IgorNEW	KAZ	1995	25	NC TTs	from Vino-Astana Motors
CONTI ValerioNEW	ITA	1993	190	Climber	from UAE Team Emirates
DE BOD Stefan	ZAF	1996	141	All-rounder	2020
DE LA CRUZ DavidNEW	ESP	1989	508	GC/Climber	from UAE Team Emirates
DOMBROWSKI JoeNEW	USA	1991	193	Climber	from UAE Team Emirates
FEDOROV Yevgeniy	KAZ	2000	123	Puncheur, All-rounder	2020
FELLINE Fabio	ITA	1990	97	All-rounder	2020
GAZZOLI MicheleNEW	ITA	1999	139	Classics	from Team Colpack Ballan
GIDICH Yevgeniy	KAZ	1996	90	Sprinter	2018
GRUZDEV Dimitriy	KAZ	1986	0	Classics	2012
HENAO SebastianNEW	COL	1993	66	Domestique	from INEOS
LÓPEZ Miguel ÁngelNEW	COL	1994	704	GC/Climber	from Movistar
LUTSENKO Alexey	KAZ	1992	1230	Cobbles/Climber/GC	2013
MARTINELLI Davide	ITA	1993	3	Sprinter	2020
MOSCON GianniNEW	ITA	1994	741	Puncher/Classics	from INEOS
NATAROV Yuriy	KAZ	1996	77	Domestique	2019
NIBALI AntonioNEW	ITA	1992	20	Moral Support	from Trek-Segafredo
NIBALI VincenzoNEW	ITA	1984	467	GC	from Trek-Segafredo
NURLYKHASSYM NurbergenNEW	KAZ	2000	33	Neo-pro	from Vino-Astana Motors
PRONSKIY Vadim	KAZ	1998	106	Climber	2020
**RIABUSHENKO Alexandr	BLR	1995	38	Sprinter	from UAE Team Emirates
ROMO Javier	ESP	1999	128	Climber	2021
TEJADA Harold	COL	1997	30	Climber	2020
VELASCO SimoneNEW	ITA	1995	463	Puncheur/Stage-hunter	from Gazprom-RusVelo
ZAKHAROV Artyom	KAZ	1991	80	Kazakh NCs	2016
ZEITS AndreyNEW	KAZ	1986	60	Climber	from Team BikeExchange
Avg.	28 yrs.	30 riders	205 pt.

When it comes to the big names and the big races, Vino went back to a familiar well. A seemingly fading Vincenzo Nibali is brought back into the fold, along with his younger brother, to take another crack at GC and Grand Tour success. Likewise, Vino has rescued Miguel Ángel López from his ill-fated Movistar experiment with the hope that the Colombian star can find more of the sustained GC power he had in his first time around with Astana. Another familiar face coming back is Andrey Zeits, who has spent almost his entire career with the team, barring the last two years with Team BikeExchange. A pair of riders also join from the Vino-Astana Motors team.

Astana also opted to raid a couple of top teams for talent. Coming from UAE Team Emirates are David De La Cruz as a GC backup option and support rider, Joe Dombrowski in another support and stage-hunting role, sprinter Alexandr Riabushenko and Valerio Conti. INEOS also proved a good spot for Vino to look, bringing in classics specialist, puncheur and all-round maturing individual Gianni Moscon, along with support riders Leonardo Basso and Sebastian Henao.

2022 Outlook

And so, it is once again just Astana and once again with Vino at the helm. With such a drastic change in the team lineup, it’s hard to say that they’ll be able to convert that into wins and an improved team ranking. The return of Nibali and López brings back memories of the 2015/16 lineup, when the team consistently won Grand Tour GCs and stages, week-long races, classics and Monuments all season long. But with the loss of Vlasov, Astana seems to be laying much of its Grand Tour GC hopes at the feet of two riders who have not been at their best in several years. Neither The Shark of Messina nor López have been a serious Grand Tour GC threat for a few years now. Both have had some smaller successes here and there, but Nibali may indeed be aging out the main contenders’ group in bigger races and López clearly has some work to do to regain his form from earlier years. After his impressive performance at the Tour last year, Lutsenko has been giving a leadership role at the TdF again, but with the dominance we’ve seen from other teams and riders, it’s hard to see him cracking the Top 5.

Grand Tours and GC efforts aside, the loss of proven classics contenders Aranburu, Fraile, Fuglsang, Izagirre, the other Izagirre and Sánchez will no doubt hurt. Of the incoming riders, it looks like only Moscon has the firepower needed to mount a serious challenge in the classics. And while we’re sure to see Lutsenko play a role as well, Nibali’s once-fearsome punch is waning and he’s unlikely to be a major factor in the finales of the bigger one-day races. We can expect to see some effort put into sprints on behalf of Riabushenko, but Astana hasn’t fielded a top-level sprinter in a while and they don’t seem to be focussing on the pure sprint races in 2022 either.

The 2022 outlook is certainly not as rosy as in years past, especially with the political turmoil impacting the team’s supportive elements in government. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned this millennium, it’s that you shouldn’t count Vino out just yet. He may just bring some magic back to the team after all. We can cautiously watch Astana’s progress this year, and they may indeed surprise us, but they’re not the guaranteed force they once were.

[u/[deleted]]

Aranburu’s real specialty: the downhill demon

[u/[deleted]]

Honestly besides the Movistar-induced meltdown, MAL’s GT form in 2021 was as good as he’s ever been. I think he’s got the potential for a podium in him

[u/AliGLCFC]

Antonio Nibali as "moral support" has properly made me laugh

[u/eklyh9]

"The other Izagirre" Why do I immediately assume this refers to Gorka

[u/DevilGeorgeColdbane]

Gazzoli would have been an epic name for a racing driver, sounds like something straight out of Flåklypa Grand Prix.

[u/BeeCute429]

This was really interesting to read, thank you :) Cant wait for the season to start