Cycling: Since the licensing for the highly controversial Astana racing team, there have been repeated discussions - officials, professionals and experts almost unanimously doubted whether the Kazakh team should receive a World Tour license because of its doping past. In a press release, the UCI is now calling for the license to be revoked.
When the license commission granted Astana the license in December, they also commissioned the Sports Science Institute of the University of Lausanne to issue an expert opinion, the result of which made the passing of the license dependent. The UCI has now examined this report and came to the conclusion that there is a "significant discrepancy between the structures communicated to the license commission in December and reality". In this respect, from the point of view of the UCI, there are urgent reasons for the commission to reconsider the decision of December - the world association itself even explicitly demands the withdrawal of the racing permit.
In addition to the report from Lausanne, there is other incriminating material: The UCI was granted access to excerpts from the Padova investigation, which concern individual members of the Astana team and appear to be incriminating. These excerpts were also forwarded to the license commission. The UCI itself will no longer comment on this matter until the decision of the commission, the press release also states.