tuesday 17 March 2009 at 23h58

The Tour de France 2009 will start on Saturday 4 July from Monaco and will finish 3 weeks later (on 26 July 2009) at the Champs-Elysées in Paris.

While the route has been announced on 22 October 2008 already, today the organisor of the Tour, Amaury Sport Organisation (A.S.O.), announced the list of selected teams.

17 of the 18 UCI ProTour teams

After the publication of the list of teams which participated in Paris-Nice 2009, the list of teams for the Tour de France 2009 is no real surprise anymore: it's exactly the same list!

Among the 18 UCI ProTour teams only one team is not welcome, Fuji-Servetto (founded on what rests of the Saunier Duval-Scott team (in the mean time renamed in Scott-American Beef)), because of the doping cases in that team in 2008.

Christian Prudhomme, director of the Tour de France, said about this: We don't want to have the former Saunier Duval team in our races. Our approach on this topic didn't change and will not change.

3 Continental Pro teams

In addition to these UCI ProTour teams, 3 Continental Pro teams have been invited: Agritubel, Skil-Shimano and Cervélo TestTeam.

The invitation of the Agritubel team is no real surprise anymore since this will be the 4th time already (after the first invitation in 2006) that this French team is invited to participate in the Tour de France. We'll therefore probably see riders like Christophe Moreau, the current French champion Nicolas Vogondy (photo) and maybe Geoffroy Lequatre, Nicolas Jalabert and Romain Feillu on the routes of la Grande Boucle.

The two other Continental Pro teams invited to participate in the 96th edition of the Tour de France are:

- the Dutch team Skil-Shimano which indicated in 2008 not to be ready to participate in the Tour de France and about which Christian Prudhomme said: We have already invited this team in the Tour du Picardie, in the Tour du Qatar, for Paris-Nice last year. This team has grown a lot together with us the last few years and has been built on solid bases. Their philosophy of cycling correspond to our vision.
In Paris-Nice it was especially the French rider Jonathan Hivert (photo) who showed the team's jersey and he finished the Race to the sun on a very good 8th place in the general ranking, 2nd best young rider. He finished 2nd of the fourth stage and fourth of the last stage.
Iwan Spekenbrink, the team's manager showed his happiness after having heard about the good news: We are grateful for the confidence Direction Cyclisme A.S.O. shows in our organisation and our vision. Our team has experienced growth in the past two years, in terms of both organisation and the potential of our riders. We have become a lot stronger in terms of breadth and our riders have shown they can compete at the highest level.

Concerning the goals of the team he added: Our goal for the Tour de France is basically the same as it is for most other races we start: riding offensively, attractively and with a good team spirit.

- the Swiss team Cervélo TestTeam with especially the Tour de France 2008 winner, Carlos Sastre

Thomas Campana, directeur sportif at Cervélo, said it's very good news for us: it's a honour that the organisor of the Tour de France puts faith in us for our participation in the Tour 2009. We are very happy that Carlos Sastre can defend his title. This really is a very good day for us.

Some of you might regret the absence in the Tour de France of Barloworld (with riders like the Tour de France 2007 polka dot jersey Mauricio Soler, Robert Hunter and Christopher Froome) and Vacansoleil (with riders like Baden Cooke or the very promissing Clément Lhotellerie).

The list of teams by country and their shirts

Below you'll see a list of the 20 teams which have been invited, order by country and with an image of the shirt of each of these teams. Each team can select 9 riders (the final selection of participating riders will not be available before June, probably just after the National Championships), which will thus as usual give a 180 rider peloton at the start in Monaco.

Germany
Team Milram
Belgium
QuickStep		Silence-Lotto
Denmark
Team Saxo Bank
Spain
Caisse d'Epargne		Euskaltel-Euskadi
United States
Garmin-Slipstream		Team Columbia-High Road
France
AG2R La Mondiale	Agritubel	BBox Bouygues Telecom	Cofidis, le crédit en ligne
Française des Jeux
Italy
Lampre-NGC		Liquigas
Kazakhstan
Astana
The Netherlands
Rabobank		Skil-Shimano
Rusland
Team Katusha
Switzerland
Cervélo TestTeam

door Thomas Vergouwen
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this publication is published in: Tour de France | Tour de France 2009

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