25 teams for Giro di Lombardia
RCS Sport has just released the list of 25 teams invited to the Italian end-of-season race, the Giro di Lombardia , which will take place on October 16. Of the 18 ProTour teams, Footon-Servetto and Lance Armstrong’s newly-founded Team Radioshack are both missing from the list. RadioShack infamously failed to be invited to the Vuelta a Espana and was also left out of the Giro d’Italia, the first of the three Grand Tours and the biggest Italian cycling race.
The Giro d’Italia is also run by RCS Sport and may further fuel the rumours of a rivalry between the Italian race director, Angelo Zomegnan, and Lance Armstrong. The rumours surfaced at the rider protest in the 2009 Giro d’Italia, when the peloton crossed Milan and grew when the American failed to appear as scheduled at the Milano-Sanremo in March.
Team Footon-Servetto, however, is the most note-worthy of the absentees. In September of 2008, the three Grand Tours signed an agreement with the Union Cycliste International, stating that 16 teams, including Footon-Servetto, which receive automatic invitations to every Grand Tour. The agreement was binding for two years, meaning that all 16 of those teams are currently riding in the Vuelta a Espana, and the Giro di Lombardia will be one of the first ProTour events which is not bound by the agreement. Footon-Servetto has been left off of the list due to a very poor season. Manuel Cardoso took the best victory of the season for the team back in January, with a stage win at the Tour Down Under.
Vacansoleil is also absent from the list, despite being led by Riccardo Ricco, who finished second in the 2007 Giro di Lombardia. Defending champion Philippe Gilbert is expected to lead team Omega Pharma-Lotto at the “race of the fallen leaves,” and world champion, Cadel Evans, is expected to lead the BMC-Racing Team. The Cervelo Test Team, Bbox Bouyges Telecom, and Team Cofidis are among the Pro-Continental teams that have proven themselves in the Tour de France and will compete in the Giro, while Italian team ISD-Neri was passed up by all the Grand Tours, but will be led by the Italian national champion Giovanni Visconti in the Giro di Lombardia.
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