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Levi Leipheimer has signed with cycling team Astana
By: Jane Richy
The North American cyclist who ended in third place in this year’s Tour de France, Levi Leipheimer, has sign a two year contract with Astana team.
Levi Leipheimer gave his first steps in cycling back in 1985 when he was 12 years old as a competitive skier, in 1987 he started to train for downhill ski racing; he became a professional cyclist in 1997 and started as a rode cyclist in 1998 sponsored by Saturn and won the U.S. National Time Trial Championship in 1999, after this success he joined the U.S. Postal Service cycling team.
His first international experience was in the Vuelta a España in 2001 finishing as third in the podium, thanks to that he was invited to join the Dutch team Rabobank as the leader and on his first time in the Tour de France he became 8th in the overall classification. This year he re-signed with Discovery Channel team (old the U.S. Postal) and finished third in the last Tour de France.
Due to so many cases and scandals for doping in the cycling discipline the Team Discovery Channel’s main sponsor stop subsidizing them, and finding a new sponsor became to hard not to say impossible for such a big team and decided to dissolve the team by the end of this year… Because of this all the team members have had to find themselves new teams.
Several of Discovery Channel team members have being recruited by Astana, between them the Portuguese Sergio Paulihno, the Spaniard Benjamin Noval, Janez Brajikovic from Slovenia, the last Tour de France winner the Spaniard Alberto Contador and who used to be Discovery’s team manager Johan Bruyneel who assisted Lance Arsmtrong to his seven consecutive yellow jersey triumphs in the biggest cycling event of the world the Tour de France, no doubt is a strong leader with a great background and this may be the main reason why so many members of the “old” team moved to Astana. Leipheimer admitted it is one of his main reasons he said “A lot of that has to do with Johan and the staff and how comfortable I am with them," (…) "It's not the exact same riders, but there will be the same philosophy and understanding there."
Astana road bicycle racing team sponsored by the Astana group and owned by companies from Kazakhstan has been involved in a lot of controversy due to many cases of doping from some of its members, the team might face skepticism from cycling authorities, the public and media. "I'm certainly not going to give up because of what's happened," Leipheimer said. "The sport is changing for the better, going in the right direction, and I'm excited to see that."
About the Author
Jane Richy is a leading writer on the sports world and the sports betting industry. Feel free to reprint this article in its whole on your site, make sure to leave all links in place and do not modify any of the content.
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