Australian Cycling Forums - Bicycles Network Australia

Wild card invitations have been announced, BMC, radioshack, cervelo, team sky and 2 others that I have had brain freeze on. Trying to post the link but my iPhone skills are severely lacking today

hows this:

Link Here

Extract:

The 22 teams designated to take part in the 2010 Tour de France:

Automatic invites:

1. AG2R La Mondiale, 2. Astana, 3. Bbox Bouygues Telecom, 4. Caisse d'Epargne, 5. Cofidis, 6. Columbia, 7. Euskaltel-Euskadi, 8. Francaise des Jeux, 9. Footon Servetto (formerly Fuji), 10. Lampre, 11. Liquigas, 12. Milram, 13. Quick Step, 14. Rabobank, 15. Saxo Bank, 16. Omega Pharma-Lotto.

Wild cards:

17. RadioShack, 18. Sky, 19. Garmin, 20. Katusha, 21. Cervelo, 22. BMC.

Beat me to it, thanks

Stupid question, but what criteria does a team have to meet in order to get an automatic invite ? Is it based on the number or types of events they compete in ?

The 16 automatically selected teams are those that were classified as ProTour in 2008 when the 2008-2010 TdF agreement was signed by ASO. There was actually 18 teams at that point but 2 (Crédit Agricole and Gerolsteiner) no longer exist.

From 2011 onwards ASO (and the other 2 big tour organisers) will be required to automatically invite the top 17 teams as of the end of 2010 to the 3 big tours.

Mod edit: this post has been merged from general discussion

Start planning, Teams have been announced for this years TDF...

SMH Link

PARIS: Australia's Cadel Evans will get another shot at the Tour de France after his new team BMC Racing received an invite into this year's event.

The 2010 Tour de France from July 3-25 will have 22 teams competing for the top prize in cycling, race organisers announced on Tuesday.

Among them will be the US Radioshack team of seven-time winner Lance Armstrong and the recently-formed British team Sky, who have built on Britain's track success at Beijing 2008 to create a roster headed by triple Olympic champion Bradley Wiggins, fourth in last year's race.

All 16 teams which form the ProTour circuit are included in the line-up, along with six specially invited teams which include BMC, Radioshack and Sky.

Last year's tour winner Alberto Contador of Spain will once again compete for the Astana team of Kazakhstan.

Two-time Tour runner-up Evans took a gamble when he decided to leave the Silence-Lotto team (now Omega Pharma-Lotto) to join the new US-based team BMC.

But BMC made it almost impossible for organisers to leave them out by signing world champion Evans, former world champion Alessandro Ballan and the experienced George Hincapie.

Asked whether the fact there were four US teams and one British team on the list this year indicated increased efforts were being made to attract interest from english-speaking countries, Tour chief Christian Prudhomme replied: "The Tour will always stay the Tour de France.

"It's the greatest cycle race in the world and there will be no turning our backs on the past.

"The race is becoming more international and that is only logical.

"In football, the best French players more often than not play for the top foreign clubs."

The 22 teams designated to take part in the 2010 Tour de France:-

ProTour Teams

AG2R-La Mondiale (FRA)

Astana (KAZ)

BBox Bouygues Telecom (FRA)

Caisse d'Epargne (ESP)

Cofidis (FRA)

Columbia (USA)

Euskaltel (ESP)

Franaise des Jeux (FRA)

Footon-Servetto (ESP)

Lampre (ITA)

Liquigas (ITA)

Milram (GER)

Omega Pharma-Lotto (BEL)

Quick Step (BEL)

Rabobank (NED)

Saxo Bank (DEN)

Special Invite Teams

Radioshack (USA)

Sky (GBR)

Katusha (RUS)

Garmin (USA)

Cervelo (SUI)

BMC (USA)

AFP

Excellent - hard to imagine the tour without Cadel these days and the BMC invite was really an unknown factor. Great that the confirmation is through.

Will be interesting to see how Cadel treats the Giro now. If he goes all out for the Giro he risks being a non event at Le Tour ala Menchov last year, he wasn't sighted.

I think Menchovs decision not to defend at the Giro indicates that he doesn't believe it's possible to go all out for both the Tour and the Giro. Maybe the WC can prove em wrong

i can't believe they let this team in:



the jersey .. OH MAI EYEZ!