A week and a half after the Astana team announced that the Kazahkstani rider Roman Kireyev was retiring from the sport, the former rider has spoken about his reasons for doing so.
The news of his withdrawal from the team came at a time when Astana had one rider too many, due to the mid-season signing of Andrey Kashechkin and the about-turn by Alexandre Vinokourov in relation to his own announced retirement. UCI rules permit most teams to have only 28 riders, and Astana’s announcement led some to question if Kireyev’s decision was fully voluntary.
Speaking to the website Astanafans.com, he insists that it was. “The return of Alexandre Vinokourov is in no way the reason for the premature end of my contract,” he said. “My back injury prevents me giving the best of myself and I have often worried about the pain. Since the beginning of the season things were not going well for me – few races, few results ... All that made me understand that it was best to leave, despite being still young.”
Just eleven days before the announcement was made that injury had caused him to walk away, Kireyev finished a solid 40th in the Tour de l’Ain stage race. He doesn’t blame the team for his decision to stop, saying things had gone on too long, but he does seem to suggest that his problem could have been handled better when it first occurred.
“In my opinion, it is necessary to change the attitude to do as the foreigners do,” he said, saying that the riders from the Soviet part of the team were not treated the same way as the others. “If I have a pain in the knee, back or elsewhere, it is not taken seriously, but the opposite occurs if it happens to a foreign rider who is considered a professional. If we are a team, this should apply to all professionals,” Astanafans quotes him as saying.
The team has apparently told him that he can return next year if his problem is solved, but he states that he simply wants to live and work in Kazakhstan.
Vinokourov has returned to training after fracturing his femur in the Tour de France. He is hoping to return to competition at the Giro di Lombardia. UCI spokesman Enrico Carpani recently told VeloNation that the rider had a contract for 2012 and that his points would be counted towards the team’s total for a ProTeam licence, whether or not he competed.
Kashechkin was the team’s designated leader in the Vuelta a España but hasn’t performed. Instead, Fredrik Kessiakoff has performed more strongly than expected and has been sitting inside the top ten as the riders battled through the mountains and time trial. He started today’s stage fourth overall, but was suffering from stomach problems and dropped to sixth.