- HOT TOPICS:
- The new VeloNews.com (BETA)
Klöden poised to leave T-Mobile and join forces with Vino'
Andréas Klöden, third in this year's Tour de France, confirmed Saturday that he will join the Astana team next season from T-Mobile.
"What clinched the decision for me is that I'm going to a very strong team which includes Alexandre Vinokourov and Andrey Kashechkin with whom I can go far next season," he said on his website.
Klöden’s contract with T-Mobile expires at the end of the 2006 season.
The 31-year-old Klöden’s first major success came at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney when he collected bronze in the road race.
In 2004 the German finished second in the Tour de France behind Lance Armstrong and finished third in this year's race behind Spaniard Oscar Pereiro, but that may change to second, when and if American Floyd Landis, who tested positive for testosterone, is disqualified.
Klöden effectively left T-Mobile because the German team simply did not offer him a new contract after he had proclaimed his support for teammate Jan Ullrich, who was sacked due to his implication in an ongoing Operación Puerto doping affair in Spain.
And one of the T-Mobile team's former managers, Walter Godefroot, said Klöden had now effectively given up all hope of ever winning the world's biggest race.
"I am really surprised by his decision," said the 63-year-old Godefroot, who worked with the team until December last year and joined up with Astana as a management consultant in July.
"At Astana, Klöden will have no chance of being the team leader while Alexandre Vinokourov is there. He is the team leader."
It leaves a question mark over Klöden’s real ambitions on the Tour, since he has been proclaiming his desire to win the yellow jersey in 2007 for several weeks.
Astana was borne of the now defunct Liberty Seguros team, who lost their sponsor when it was alleged by prosecutors in Spain that several of their riders were implicated in the ongoing doping affair.
