Tour de France organizers on Wednesday announced the three wild-card teams that will join 18 others for this year's race.

Agritubel and Barloworld will join 19 of the 20 teams from the UCI ProTour series for the three-week epic, which begins July 7 in London.

Astana, which competes in the Pro Tour, was the third team to be handed a wild-card invitation although its invitation was at the discretion of the organizers as Astana was not ranked on the ProTour last season.

It means there will be no place in the Tour de France peloton for the Swedish-registered team Unibet, which this season has fallen victim to a dispute between the major race organizers and the UCI.

Amaury Sports Organisation (ASO), the company which owns the Tour de France and several other top sports events, had already decided on the presence of 18 ProTour teams for the race several months ago.

Barloworld, a British-registered South African outfit that boasts South African sprinter Robert Hunter in its ranks, is ranked second in the UCI's Continental Team Europe Tour series behind the Rabobank team's under-23 outfit.

Managed by Italian Claudio Corti, Barloworld also features up-and-coming South African John-Lee Augustyn, Colombian climber Felix Cardenas, a former Tour de France stage winner, Russian Alexandre Efimkin and Italian Fabrizio Guidi.

Astana is a Switzerland-registered ProTour team but is effectively Kazakh in nature. It is spearheaded by Alexandre Vinokourov and compatriot Andrey Kashechkin, and as such was widely tipped to make it to the Tour.

Vinokourov is a former Tour podium finisher but failed to compete in the race last year after his Liberty team were suspended due to several riders, though not Vinokourov, being implicated in the 'Operation Puerto' doping affair.

Vino' later went on to make amends by racing in and winning last year's Vuelta a España. Astana also counts Andreas Kloden, who finished on the podium twice while racing with T-Mobile, in its ranks.

French outfit Agritubel, which is also in the UCI's Continental series, are the third team to earn a start on the race, which will feature 21 teams of nine riders each.

Agritubel competed on the Tour last year, and emerged with a worthy stage win courtesy of Spaniard Juan Miguel Mercado at Pau.

Unibet, an internet betting company, will be the only ProTour team not invited to the showcase event.

Race organizers in France, and occasionally in Belgium, have this season blocked Unibet from racing because of laws against advertising betting companies.

Unibet appealed to the European Commission over the dispute, and the European body announced its support of the team.