05/04/2008
Astana will line up their best possible team in the Giro d'Italia despite a late invitation to the three-week race, sporting director Alain Gallopin said on Sunday.
Astana said on Saturday that Giro organisers RCS had asked them the day before to participate in the race which starts next Saturday, having originally left the Kazakh team out.
"We will go to the Giro with our three leaders, Alberto Contador, Levi Leipheimer and Andreas Kloeden," Gallopin told Reuters before the fifth and last stage of the Tour de Romandie.
"It is not easy to turn the riders' agenda upside down, but above all the staff's. But since the beginning of the season, we have been adapting to all kinds of situations. "So it is obvious that we're going there to win."
Astana entered the season with arguably the strongest squad of the peloton, with Tour de France champion Contador, twice Tour runner-up Kloeden and last year's third-placed rider Leipheimer.
The Kazakh team had overhauled their structure after being hit by a series of doping scandals over the past two years, with leader Alexander Vinokourov testing positive for blood doping following his stage win in Albi on the 2007 Tour de France.
Belgian Johan Bruyneel, who helped Lance Armstrong to seven straight titles on the French roads, took over from Swiss Marc Biver as team manager.
But the team suffered a setback when Tour de France organisers ASO said Astana would be barred from entering all their races this season because of their past doping record.
Giro organisers also said they would not invite Astana to their events but changed their minds eight days before the start of the Italian race.
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