When Yanina Kuskova rolled throughout the road on high of Alpe d’Huez on this yr’s Tour de France Femmes, she did so alone. At the very least when it comes to her Tashkent Metropolis Ladies‘s crew, for whom Kuskova was the only rider left within the race.
Her team-mates had all deserted – 4 of them after the primary stage – resulting in questions as to why and the way the crew got here to be driving.
Now although, the crew is reportedly gone for good.
The crew was arrange three years in the past by the Uzbekistan Biking Federation with the intention of qualifying riders for the Paris Olympic Video games. Now, having finished that and with the Video games – and that ignominious week on the TDFF previously – the crew has disbanded.
In keeping with GlobalPeloton, the crew was disbanding for a number of causes, “together with the completion of the Olympic objective and lack of elite biking infrastructure within the nation”.
Kuskova, the crew talisman, wrote on Instagram yesterday, saying she had not raced because the Tour de France Femmes. She had continued to coach, she mentioned, with the intention of going to Zurich for the Worlds highway race.
Nonetheless, the airline tickets booked by the federation would have seen her arrive with simply 24 hours to spare, which she mentioned would have left her drained.
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“I mentioned I will not go in that case, however they do not care,” she wrote. “I am so sorry that in Uzbekistan they do not perceive the worth of biking and athletes. It is a disgrace, our crew existed for 3 years and it was a good time and now it is over.”
A shrewd concentrating on of low-hanging UCI factors by the crew had seen it qualify to experience all WorldTour races in 2024, in addition to two riders for the Olympics.
It had been the Paris Video games, reasonably than the Tour de France Femmes and different WorldTour races, that had been the primary intention, coach Gleb Groysman advised CyclingNews earlier this yr.
“We do not have sufficient riders to race all of the World Tour races. We’ve got possibly solely two or three prepared for a Grand Tour. We do not have sufficient bikes, wheels and there may be merely no skilled employees ,” he mentioned.
At Paris, Uzbekistan certified Kuskova and her embellished veteran team-mate Olga Zabelinskaya – a medallist within the 2012 and 2016 Video games – for the highway occasions. There was no medal this time, with each ending mid-pack within the highway race and Zabelinskaya twenty third within the time trial.
Now that the Video games are over, it might seem that so is any cause for the crew to exist.
Groysman mentioned goodbye to the crew every week in the past, and now the revelation that the crew shall be no extra.
Group rider Nafosat Kozieva, who pulled out of the TDFF after three levels, wrote on Instagram after Groysman’s departure: “We’ve got been by means of a lot in three years.” She referred to as 2024 “unrealistically troublesome, accountable, traumatic” however mentioned that when Groysman left he insisted, “This isn’t the top but”.
