Spain's Tour de France champion Alberto Contador has reached a preliminary agreement with his Astana team to fulfil his contract until the end of 2010.
"The agreement depends on Astana retaining their ProTour licence for 2010 and the introduction of an internal anti-doping programme," Contador's press office said on Thursday.
Although Astana missed one deadline on October 20, the governing International Cycling Union (UCI) is expected to reach a possibly definitive decision on a licence by Friday.
After a turbulent 2009, Contador had threatened to leave the Kazakh-funded Astana outfit and had opened negotiations with several other leading teams, having had contact with Caisse d'Epargne, Quick Step, Garmin-Slipstream and Liquigas.
Thursday's statement from his press office said: "(Contador) has taken the decision to complete his contract with Astana having confirmed that both Yvon Sanquer, the new team manager, and sports director Giuseppe Martinelli guarantee the seriousness and competitiveness of the new Astana project.
"In a short space of time they have managed to bring together a group of riders of great quality with which to tackle the sporting challenges of the next season.
"The duration of the contract will be only one year because, apart from being a new project for Astana, Alberto Contador does not wish to renounce the option of making a decision about his longer term future," added the statement.
Although Astana missed one deadline on October 20, the governing International Cycling Union (UCI) is expected to reach a possibly definitive decision on a licence by Friday.
After a turbulent 2009, Contador had threatened to leave the Kazakh-funded Astana outfit and had opened negotiations with several other leading teams, having had contact with Caisse d'Epargne, Quick Step, Garmin-Slipstream and Liquigas.
Thursday's statement from his press office said: "(Contador) has taken the decision to complete his contract with Astana having confirmed that both Yvon Sanquer, the new team manager, and sports director Giuseppe Martinelli guarantee the seriousness and competitiveness of the new Astana project.
"In a short space of time they have managed to bring together a group of riders of great quality with which to tackle the sporting challenges of the next season.
"The duration of the contract will be only one year because, apart from being a new project for Astana, Alberto Contador does not wish to renounce the option of making a decision about his longer term future," added the statement.
Reuters
No comments:
Post a Comment