The 2016 Tour of Qatar will begin on February 8 without Etixx-Quickstep, the team which has won the past four editions. The Belgian WorldTour squad was not among the 18 teams announced by the ASO, so there will be no third overall victory in a row for Dutchman Niki Terpstra. Tom Boonen remains the most successful rider in the race, with 22 stage wins, four overall victories and seven points jerseys.
Etixx-Quickstep confirmed the team would not take part, saying they'd "changed their race programmes a little bit for 2016".
The WorldTour will instead be represented by AG2R La Mondiale, Giant-Alpecin, Lampre-Merida, LottoNl-Jumbo, Katusha, Dimension Data and BMC Racing. The presence of only seven WorldTour teams is a significant decrease from previous years. The 2015 edition of the race had 13 WorldTour teams taking part.
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Absent too are Tinkoff-Saxo, meaning the race will go off without World Champion Peter Sagan. Sagan will start his season at the Tour de San Luis. Tinkoff-Saxo manager Stefano Feltrin said they chose not to race Qatar, "based on technical reasons".
Etixx-Quickstep team director Wilfried Peeters told Sporza that the team decided to race the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, which returns to the calendar as a UCI 2.1 stage race on February 3-7.
"Part of the Classics team will race in Spain, and some will be at the Volta ao Algarve [in Portugal]. This way the travel before the opening weekend in Flanders is somewhat more limited," Peeters said.
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