Former Lithuanian champion back at Kazakh team after miserable year at RadioShack
Tomas Vaitkus is returning to the Astana team after a year with RadioShack. The former Lithuanian champion previously rode with the Kazakh team in 2008 and 2009 before following director sportif Johan Bruyneel, and many of the other riders, to the new American team.
Before his time at Astana Vaitkus rode under Bruyneel at Discovery Channel in 2007, so the decision to follow the Belgian director was an understandable one. Prior to this he spent two years each at AG2R-La Mondiale and Landbouwkrediet.
Vaitkus has aspirations as a classics specialist, having finished sixth in the 2007 Ronde van Vlaanderen, although the biggest victory of his career so far was stage 9 of the 2006 Giro d’Italia between Francavilla al Mare and Termoli.
He had been part of the Discovery Channel Tour de France team in 2007 but was unable to support Alberto Contador’s victory after he was caught up in the mass pileup in Gent, Belgium on stage 2. In 2008 though, the year he won his national championships, he rode the Vuelta a Espana, which Contador also won.
The 2010 season did not go well for the 28-year-old; he broke his shoulder in the Volta ao Algarve in February and suffered with the after-effects of the injury for the rest of the season.
Astana expects the Lithuanian to “be one of the major characters” of the team in 2011.