Astana’s UCI WorldTour licence under review after another doping positive

Kazakh cycling team Astana, home of the Tour de France champion Vincenzo Nibali (Italy) and stage race revelation of the year Fabio Aru (Italy), is facing a UCI review of its WorldTour licence after a third rider tested positive for doping within two and half months. Steroids were found in a sample taken from trainee or stagiaire Ilya Davidenok on Aug. 28 at the Tour of Avenir after Maxim and Valintin Iglinskiy’s both tested positive for EPO in August.

The team has been under scrutiny since Aug. 11, when Maxim became the second Iglinskiy brother in which EPO was discovered. Astana already has a UCI World Tour place for 2015, but the UCI has called the team onto the carpet. In a statement the UCI said: “As per the UCI Regulations, it is expected that the team will appear before the Licence Commission within the next month for an assessment of the team’s level of compliance with the ethical criteria so that the appropriate measures can be then taken.”

Davidenok raced for Continental Team Astana from 2012 to Aug. 1 when he joined the Astana Pro Team. National teams race the Tour of Avenir, so Davidenok was on the Kazakhstan squad when his Adverse Analytical Finding for anabolic androgenic steroids came from a sample collected on Aug. 28.

Tenth in the team competition of the 2014 WorldTour, Astana has been dogged by doping since its creation. In the 2007 Tour de France Alexander Vinokourov—the team’s current manager—tested positive for blood doping and the team was asked to leave the race. Alberto Contador couldn’t defend his Tour title when the squad was left out of 2008’s Tour, but he won both the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España that season.