A Chinese carbon company wants to create a new Word Tour super team

Surprising announcement from Astana regarding the sponsorship, starting from next season, of a new main sponsorship from the Chinese manufacturer XDS Carbon-Tech, a manufacturer of carbon fiber and also of their own frames made of this material, which presumably would become the new bikes of the Kazakh team.

Astana could race with Chinese bikes next year

XDS Carbon-Tech is one of the world's largest producers of carbon fiber, as well as producing their own bike frames in this material. Now, they want to open up to the world and make themselves known by entering directly into the World Tour with a million-dollar investment in sponsoring the Astana team, a squad that in recent years has been accompanied by news of delays in payments to its cyclists and all kinds of economic problems.

The choice of a flagship team like Astana, sponsored by the government of Kazakhstan and companies from this country, is curious. However, XDS Carbon-Tech's intention would be for the team to have a Chinese license, something that will be difficult to refuse given that we are talking about an investment on the level of UAE Team Emirates or Visma-Lease a Bike.

Being XDS Carbon-Tech also a manufacturer of bike frames, it is presumable that the sponsorship agreement also includes the supply of bicycles, having to abandon their current agreement with Wilier.

During the Tour de France, several meetings have taken place between Alexander Vinokourov, general manager of Astana, and representatives of XDS Carbon-Tech, and rumors suggest that the sponsorship agreement could be officially announced even before the end of the Tour de France 2024.

A sponsorship that comes as a godsend for Astana in a season where the team has fallen into total irrelevance and occupies relegation positions in the World Tour teams classification in the second year of the current licensing cycle, so next year they will have to look at the classification again to decide which teams will make up the World Tour category from 2016 to 2018.