Says Vinokourov has a contract until the end of 2012 and points will count towards team’s total
Following yesterday’s news that the Astana rider Roman Kireyev will retire with immediate effect from cycling, the UCI has confirmed to VeloNation that it will seek confirmation from the rider himself that he wishes to stop.
“The UCI will ask the rider to send a written confirmation, by letter with signature, confirming his decision,” UCI spokesman Enrico Carpani said. However he added that the UCI was following a process rather than questioning the matter. “This is not a matter of confidence, but just a formal requirement.”
Although Kireyev himself is yet to comment on the issue, the Astana team yesterday issued a release saying that he was talking away from the sport. “On Friday 19 August 2011, the rider of Pro Team Astana Roman Kireyev informed the management of Pro Team Astana about his decision to finish his career as professional cyclist,” it stated early yesterday. “This information wasn’t unexpected for the management of the team, because Roman already discussed this step with sport directors few months ago.
“Roman explained that he suffered too much from his back injury, which he got last year, and this situation had became unbearable to him.”
Kireyev turned professional with the team in 2008. The news of his retirement has been met with some surprise, given that he finished 40th in the Tour de l’Ain less than two weeks ago.
His departure means that the team no longer has an excess rider. Its roster had increased to 29, one above the maximum permitted of 28, when Andrey Kashechkin completed a mid-season transfer from Lampre and Alexandre Vinokourov reversed his decision to retire.
Yesterday’s announcement that Kireyev would stop came just three days after l’Equipe noted that the team had one rider too many under the UCI’s rules.
The 24 year old is now requested to verify with the UCI that he does consider his career to be over.
Meanwhile the governing body has confirmed that whether or not Vinokourov competes again, that his points will be considered for next year’s ProTeam licence.
“Vino is now a rider who is injured, and so is not competing anymore,” said Carpani. “Even under this condition, however, he could still be part of the team at the end of the season – at least from formal point of view – as his contract will run until end of next year [2012 – ed.]. In this case, his points could be considered for the sporting evaluation of the team, based on the first 15 contracts sent to Ernst and Young as per 20 of October.”
The ruling is a puzzling one as it could mean that a rider who does not race in 2012 will influence whether or not a team is considered to be at a sufficiently high level to get a licence.
Vinokourov is currently eleventh overall in the ProTeam rankings. His 230 points form the bulk of Astana’s 410 points, without which it would be outside the top 18 teams.
Given that Vinokourov’s points were counted in the UCI’s updates to the WorldTour standings since he declared his resignation from the sport in July, it appears that the governing body still considered him part of the team. It means that when Kashechkin’s registration was approved, Astana was indeed one rider over the maximum at the time.