So it happened!

[Patchelicious]

@olegtinkov: Here is the first real announcement: We signed Bradley Wiggins and Michael Ignatiev

[urbanroyal]

He tweeted this as well ...

 

@olegtinkov: ok, my account has been hacked tonight! Tomorrow it will be back to me from hackers. Therefore, see you in the morning, good night, dudes!

[urbanroyal]

And this ...

 

@olegtinkov: Sorry, actually, Froomey just called me and stop me to sign Wiggo, he and his wife against his carrier development in cycling . #messSKY

...

[Gen]

Ha ha ha ha mr tinkov was enjoying a lot of crystal last night.. and messing with his twitter followers ha ha ha.

 

 

 

 

[Patchelicious]

That dude is an animal! He strikes me as the kinda of guy to get pissed, then breaks into the riders rooms and injects them with Edgar in their sleep!

[Patchelicious]

@olegtinkov: I believe #UCI won't come tonight to my 80m yacht 6am as they usually do for blood test? No need control! I am doped by Burgundy and Crystal

['Dale]

Zat crazy Rushian

['Dale]

Bless him though as such a fine sponsor on the World Tour

[Shebeen]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=11301020

After Borat trashed Kazakhstan's image, the oil-rich Central Asian nation has hit back through Italian cyclist Vincenzo Nibali - and believes his Tour de France victory helps put the record straight.

Nibali's triumph on the Champs-Elysees this week concluded an eight-year campaign by his Astana Pro Team - named after the Kazakh capital and funded by the country's sovereign wealth fund - to get people talking about the world's biggest landlocked nation.

"This has been a very successful project, if you took the mathematics, how many times Astana was named in social media and in newspapers and on TV," said Kairat Kelimbetov, president of Kazakh Cycling, governor of the country's central bank and a former deputy prime minister.

The team's tribulations with drug-tainted riders and financial crises could have reinforced the reputation built by Sacha Baron Cohen's 2006 mocking documentary Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

The country ruled by President Nursultan Nazarbayev since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 also struggles with a poor human rights image.

"The power of sport is very strong," Kelimbetov said in an interview after the Tour victory by the team's star Italian rider.

"Astana is part of a big PR strategy to just give people an idea that there is a state in central Asia that is big, the size of Western Europe, the ninth-biggest in the world, and we are part of the global community," he added.

The cycling team has made global headlines with a modest budget of US$15 million ($17.5 million) a year out of about $100 million a year spent on the Astana Presidential Sports Club, according to Kelimbetov.

And the club aims to make itself seen and heard even more in cycling and other sports.

The club has seven professional sports teams, including a $50 million a year ice hockey squad and a football team, all with the aim of "projecting a positive image" of Kazakhstan abroad and encouraging sport at home.

"It is like a Real Madrid in Kazakhstan," said Kelimbetov.

The Astana Arlans boxing team won the inaugural World Series of Boxing title last year.

The club also supports Ilya Ilyin, a double Olympic champion weightlifter, and Denis Ten, who won figure skating bronze at the Sochi Winter Olympics this year.

The cycling team was set up in 2006, just as Borat was being released, though Kelimbetov said there was no link between the two.

The club was set up to support Kazakhstan's star rider Alexander Vinokourov, who won the Tour of Spain that year for the team.

But soon after he was involved in a doping scandal that led to a two-year ban.

Vinokourov, a "national hero" in Kazakhstan, is now Astana's general manager.

Astana later signed Alberto Contador who won the Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a Espana in 2008. In 2009, seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong came out of retirement and joined Astana.

Contador won the 2010 Tour de France but had the title taken away after failing a drug test.

Armstrong, later stripped of his record seven Tour de France titles for doping, left that year in a dispute over the return of Vinokourov.

That was when Kelimbetov took control to sort out its finances and its scandals. The team set up a programme with cycling's governing body, the UCI, to avoid doping violations.

"Actually Astana was probably the first team who really started five years ago to clean up the house and we are now following all these rules," he said.

As a leading voice on the Astana Presidential Sports Club, Kelimbetov said it was determined to prove that Nibali was not a one-off.

"We would like this to be a long sporting story," he said.

[Skylark]

Hahaha I thought Astana was some east European truck brand or budget car make like a SEAT.

 

[Bonus]

So many Borat phrases coming to mind right now. Lol

 

I can just see Nibali sitting in a large chair in his hotel room chanting "I'm the king of the castle, I'm the king of the castle ...."

Edited August 2, 2014 by Bonus