Kazakh team puts its backing behind two leaders
Following on from an impressive sequence of results in recent weeks, Slovenian fastman Borut Bozic and last year’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège winner Maxim Iglinskiy will share leadership roles with the Astana team for Sunday’s Ronde Van Vlaanderen.
Bozic has racked up eight top ten results thus far this season, marking a real return to form, and most recently was runner up in Dwars door Vlaanderen and Gent Wevelgem. He has the speed to clock up a top performance if Flanders comes down to a small group, while Iglinskiy’s victory last year in Liège-Bastogne-Liège shows that he can perform strongly on the hills of Flanders and cope well if the race is more aggressive.
Together, the two give Astana a couple of options and cover different scenarios in the Classic.
“Bozic comes at the peak of his fitness, and has some great results to show in the past month,” said directeur sportif Stefano Zanini. “He was on the podium at Dwars door Vlaanderen and at Gent-Wevelgem, he was a strong protagonist in Milano-San Remo and was among the leaders in Paris-Nice every day.”
Iglinskiy’s recent performances include second in the fourth stage of Paris-Nice, eighth in the Dwars door Vlaanderen and twelfth in the E3 Prijs. Zanini believes that he is also reaching form at the right time.
“Iglinskiy followed much the same preparation, but began in Australia at the Tour Down Under and followed up with a series of Italian one-day races that better suit his attacking style. We saw him come to the front at E3 Prijs Harelbeke and make serious moves in the lead group, and this is an indication that he has the physical and tactical preparation that can bring a measure of success on Sunday at the Ronde van Vlaanderen.”
Also riding Sunday’s Classic for Astana are the Kazakhstanis Assan Bazayev, Dmitriy Gruzdev, Dimitriy Muravyev and Ruslan Tleubayev, plus the Italian duo Jacopo Guarnieri and Simone Ponzi. Their role is a simple one: support the two team leaders and do whatever they can to advance their chances of fighting for the final podium.