Tour de France Wild Card Drama

Well, it is now official. Unibet, the Claytons ProTour squad (that’s the ProTour licence you pay for when you are not really getting a ProTour licence), will be sitting out this year’s Tour de France.

It is the announcement that nearly every cycling observer has expected and the one that the Unibet Cycling Team has feared most.

On their official race website, Tour organiser ASO have announced that the 18 ProTour teams pre-selected in December for July’s race, will be joined by three wild cards, of which Unibet is not one.

The invitations have gone to the Swiss registered, very Kazak Astana team, the French registered and very French Agritubel team and the British registered, South African sponsored, but very Italian team, Barloworld.

The 21 teams will each field 9 riders, giving a total of 189 cyclists making their historic lap of London in the prologue time trial on July 7.