When the Excursion de France Femmes avec Zwift rolls out of Rotterdam on August 12, 2024, there might be a couple of unexpected names within the peloton.
A UCI Girls’s squad from Uzbekistan, Tashkent Town Girls’s Professional Biking Staff, lately appears set to be invited to all Girls’s WorldTour races in 2024 after completing nineteenth within the UCI Global Score of groups on the finish of 2023.
The merger between Liv Racing TeqFind and Jayco-AlUla (to be renamed Liv-AlUla-Jayco in 2024) and the folding of EF Schooling-TIBCO-SVB has successfully driven the Uzbek workforce as much as seventeenth and into the 3rd of the 3 wildcard spots in most cases reserved for the highest 3 Continental groups on this planet rating.
Tashkent’s street to racing within the Girls’s WorldTour in 2024 has now not been an easy one and it has now not but been showed – a number of rival groups have lobbied with the UCI over the validity of a few in their points-scoring effects for the reason that summer time.
The wildcard allocations are but to be made reliable for the 2024 season, with the UCI having advised Cyclingnews that the “registration process is lately ongoing and an inventory of all mandatory invites for the 2024 UCI WorldTour occasions will be revealed at the UCI site at a later date” – regarded as the December 12.
Tashkent making plans a restricted WorldTour time table
Tashkent geared their complete 2023 season round profitable as many UCI features as imaginable, with the intent to earn Uzbekistan a place within the 2024 Olympic Video games street race, which they completed with ease.
The workforce, sponsored through the Uzbekistan executive, expects the wildcard to be showed through the UCI. On the other hand, they’re handiest making plans to race a couple of WorldTour occasions in 2024 because of budgetary constraints, workforce dimension and a loss of biking infrastructure.
“The finance from the federal government is only for Olympic medals, now not for the Excursion de France or Giro d’Italia,” the workforce’s trainer, Gleb Groysman, advised Cyclingnews.
“We can’t race all WorldTour races as a result of we would not have sufficient riders. We now have possibly 3 or 4 ladies in a position to race within the WorldTour, and they’re very younger.
“We now have an excessively, very exhausting scenario as a result of there don’t seem to be sufficient motorcycles, wheels, anything else…group of workers is downside primary. There are not any skilled group of workers there.”
It’s symptomatic of a country that has risen throughout the biking ranks at a sensational tempo since Groysman took the reins as trainer of the ladies’s nationwide programme in 2021.
The workforce are hoping for extra monetary enhance from the federal government or for a sponsor to return on board in order that they may be able to fulfil their race time table for subsequent season. Groysman desires to lift an extra $500,000 in funds.
Tashkent plan to race the Excursion de France Femmes avec Zwift, Giro d’Italia Girls and a couple of different WorldTour degree races such because the UAE Excursion, however Groysman isn’t making plans to take the workforce to any of the one-day classics within the spring, except a imaginable journey at Strade Bianche in March.
Lots of the main one-day races within the spring conflict with the global monitor programme, which is a better precedence because of Uzbekistan’s Olympic ambitions within the velodrome.
Central Asia’s first workforce to race the Excursion de France Femmes avec Zwift
Uzbekistan is a country with some historical past in biking, particularly the exploits of the enigmatic Djamolidine Abdoujaparov, one of the vital a hit sprinters of the Nineties, and up to date WorldTour skilled Sergey Lagutin.
On the other hand, Groysman, who coached a teenage Pavel Sivakov in his local Russia however is now residing in the US, described the Central Asian nation as “now not a biking nation, completely now not.”
Because the identify suggests, Tashkent Town Girls’s Professional Biking Staff is founded in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. It only options Uzbek riders, essentially the most well known of those being Olga Zabelinskaya.
Earlier than becoming a member of her present workforce, the 43-year-old Zabelinskaya were a part of Eu and American-based UCI groups since 2004, maximum not too long ago racing for Roland Cogeas Edelweiss Squad in 2022.
Zabelinskaya has 3 Olympic medals to her identify, having taken silver within the particular person time trial in 2016 and two bronzes in 2012, all when representing Russia. She was once additionally seventh at October’s Excursion of Chongming Island Girls’s Global Excursion race.
The workforce additionally options a number of promising younger skills, equivalent to Margarita Misyurina and Yanina Kuskova, the latter in particular inspired this season when she completed 2d on the Italian degree race Trofeo Ponente in Rosa, simply at the back of Jolanda Neff.
“I can’t say to you our effects for subsequent yr, however I am certain we will be able to succeed in our objectives within the height of the races as a result of they’re very, very motivated. The entire ladies are very, very motivated and in a position to paintings. I would not have any downside with running, they actually paintings, 24/7. So, I’m hoping we will be able to be height of the races subsequent yr,” Groysman stated.
“We can’t win the Excursion de France or Giro d’Italia. A excellent consequence for us within the first yr could be to complete there with all our riders. Perhaps on one degree a top-three, possibly. We can’t win at the moment, but when we will be able to end, it could be nice for our first season racing within the WorldTour.”
Eu groups carry features question with UCI
A temporary foray into the late-season Chinese language WorldTour races apart, Tashkent raced a low-profile calendar in 2023. They secured UCI features in smaller one-day races, continental championships and nationwide championships.
The compilation of features helped them to unusually shoot up the UCI workforce ratings early within the season, above established Eu UCI Girls’s groups equivalent to Cofidis and St Michel-Mavic-Auber 93 – bumping the latter out of the wildcard puts.
Because the season wore on, St Michel-Mavic-Auber 93 changed into suspicious of Tashkent’s features haul. In the summertime, the French workforce raised a question with the UCI along a number of others.
“As we had the 2024 wildcard as the primary objective for our 2023 season, we all the time had a watch at the UCI Global Score,” St Michel-Mavic-Auber 93 Head of Communications and Construction, Charlie Nerzic, advised Cyclingnews.
“Mid-season, we began to look that Tashkent was once getting many features on races that didn’t fit UCI minimal requirement referring to individuals or with each the nationwide workforce with Tashkent riders and Tashkent racing.”
UCI laws state that street races will have to have no less than 40 riders to award UCI features. Tashkent had scored features in different races in Cyprus in February, which didn’t meet this usual.
In a chain of one-day races at house in Uzbekistan in Might and on the Belgrade GP Lady Excursion the month later, Tashkent fielded riders representing the Uzbekistan Nationwide Staff in addition to their very own workforce. In idea, this may permit Tashkent to attain features with double the selection of riders at each and every race.
Groysman stated that the workforce merely “didn’t know” that this was once towards the principles. “We had been in Europe with 8 riders, so we requested the organisation in Belgrade, may we installed two groups, 4 and 4? They usually stated, ‘sure, you’ll,’” Groysman added in defence.
In October, the UCI got rid of features from lots of the races in Uzbekistan and Cyprus. The workforce had been additionally retrospectively disqualified from the two.2 Belgrade GP Lady Excursion.
“The UCI revealed a brand new UCI Global Score, and lots of the problematic features had been deleted,” Nerzic stated.
On the other hand, Nerzic had additionally raised a priority with the UCI about Uzbekistan’s nationwide championships.
Tashkent had received a vital selection of features through beginning riders who had been eligible in each the under-23 and elite races, filling the highest 10 in virtually each and every tournament.
That is criminal inside the UCI’s laws and a “great method to money 700 features,” in keeping with Nerzic. On the other hand, this custom is handiest authorised if the under-23 and elite championships are contested over separate races, which is one thing St Michel “doubted.”
Groysman affirmed the consequences, pointing out that the under-23 and elite races happened on separate weekends or even had a UCI commissaire provide. He additionally identified that it is a commonplace apply in different nations too.
Tashkent’s 709 features received on the nationwide championships stand and shape greater than a 3rd in their 2023 general.
With the UCI procedure now entire, to Nerzic’s wisdom, Tashkent will have to earn its wildcard in keeping with UCI laws. Because the ratings stand on the time of writing, Tashkent sits 203 features forward of St Michel after level deductions.
“Information are actually that we may not get awarded the required wildcard for 2024. It’s what it’s. We merely hope that races organisers will see our price and invite us,” Nerzic stated.
Tashkent’s wildcard luck might be considered as a favorable for the UCI’s time table to globalise the game. It presentations that anyplace a workforce is founded, they may be able to get admission to the arena’s greatest races in the event that they rating sufficient features. On the other hand, the way during which Tashkent scored their features and unknown talent of many in their riders, would possibly go away others wondering the method which delivered the Uzbek squad a spot on the height desk of biking.