Astana have Giro d'Italia visa problems

Members of Giro D'Italia getting ready for the race.Astana have become the latest team to suffer visa problems ahead of the Giro d'Italia. The Kazakh team have had to withdraw Maxim Iglinskiy and Alexey Lutsenko from their line-up after they failed to secure visas in time for the start in Belfast, azh.kz reports citing sport.gazeta.kz. 

“Maxim Iglinskiy and Alexey Lutsenko submitted passports for UK visas to the British embassy in Paris on April 17. They received no response after two weeks, nor were their passports returned – leaving them off the roster and then stranding them in Nice, away from their families in Kazakhstan,”  - Astana general manager Alexandr Vinokourov said in a team press release.

The two riders will be replaced by Borut Bozic and Janez Brajkovic. Bozic hasn't raced since Amstel Gold on April 20, after riding a full cobbled classics campaign. Brajkovic recently abandoned on stage one of the Tour de Romandie after injuring his knee in the prologue. They will be riding in support of Michele Scarponi. Andrey Zeits is the remaining Kazakh rider in the team, after applying through a different Embassy.

Last year the winner of Giro’DItali 2013 was the representative of “Astana” team Vincenzo Nibali.“We are disappointed to leave two of Kazakhstan’s brightest cycling federation riders off the World Tour Giro roster, and find silence and the non-response of the British Embassy in Paris such a contrast to the efficient work done by their colleagues in Germany for our processed and registered Kazakh rider Andrey Zeits.”

Astana aren't the only team to have had issues with getting visas for the opening three days of the corsa rosa. Nicolas Roche recently reported in his blog in the Irish Independent that his team-mates Nikolay Trusov, Ivan Rovny and Edward Beltran are also without visas.

It's understood that there may be several other riders having difficulty obtaining the necessary paperwork to enter the UK.

Members of Astana Pro Team at Giro d’Italia 2014:

Scarponi – ITA
Agnoli – ITA
Aru – ITA
Bozic – SLO
Brajkovic – SLO
Gasparotto – ITA
Landa – ESP
Tiralongo – ITA
Zeits – KAZ

To recall, tomorrow, May 9, Giro’DItali 2014 -  the97th edition ofthree weeks of racing will start in Belfast andwill travel across both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.They will finishs on June 1 in Triest.

Last year the winner of Giro’DItali 2013 was the representative of “Astana” team Vincenzo Nibali.