When Yanina Kuskova rolled throughout the road on prime 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 Girls‘s workforce, for whom Kuskova was the only real 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 workforce got here to be using.
Now although, the workforce is reportedly gone for good.
The workforce 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 performed that and with the Video games – and that ignominious week on the TDFF previously – the workforce has disbanded.
In response to GlobalPeloton, the workforce 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 workforce talisman, wrote on Instagram yesterday, saying she had not raced because the Tour de France Femmes. She had continued to coach, she stated, with the intention of going to Zurich for the Worlds highway race.
Nevertheless, the airline tickets booked by the federation would have seen her arrive with simply 24 hours to spare, which she stated would have left her drained.
The most recent race content material, interviews, options, critiques and professional shopping for guides, direct to your inbox!
“I stated 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 workforce 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 workforce had seen it qualify to trip all WorldTour races in 2024, in addition to two riders for the Olympics.
It had been the Paris Video games, moderately than the Tour de France Femmes and different WorldTour races, that had been the principle 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 possibly solely two or three prepared for a Grand Tour. We do not have sufficient bikes, wheels and there’s merely no skilled workers ,” he stated.
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 could seem that so is any purpose for the workforce to exist.
Groysman stated goodbye to the workforce every week in the past, and now the revelation that the workforce shall be no extra.
Staff rider Nafosat Kozieva, who pulled out of the TDFF after three phases, wrote on Instagram after Groysman’s departure: “We’ve been by way of a lot in three years.” She known as 2024 “unrealistically troublesome, accountable, annoying” however stated that when Groysman left he insisted, “This isn’t the top but”.
