Vincenzo Nibali carefully hid behind the UCI rule stopping riders talking about their future teams until the transfer window officially opens on August 1, but Cyclingnews understands the Giro d’Italia winner will ride for the nascent Bahrain Cycling Team in 2017 after playing a key role in the creation of the new WorldTour team.
Nibali and his agents Alex and Jonny Carera met with Darkan Mangeldiev, the head of the Astana team project and the Kazakhstan Cycling Federation after the Giro d’Italia ended in Turin on Sunday. However, it seems this was more to celebrate yet another Grand Tour victory for Astana and agree that Nibali will ride the Tour de France as vital preparation for the Rio Olympic road race, rather than target overall victory. Nibali is ready to ride in support of Fabio Aru at the Tour de France in exchange for the Sardinian’s support at the Olympics and an amicable goodbye.
Astana manager Alexander Vinokourov told Cyclingnews he was still hopeful that Nibali could decide to stay at Astana, but it seems that not even a substantial increase in Astana’s offer will stop Nibali from opting to move on and becoming the absolute team leader at the Bahrain Cycling Team.
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Nibali’s relationship with Prince Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa began back in February 2015 when he and Alex Carera were invited to Bahrain by the prince before riding the Dubai Tour. Nibali and the prince rode together, and the prince also attended the final stage of the Tour de France in Paris. He is a keen triathlete and has completed several Ironman events, and represented Bahrain internationally. He created the Bahrain Endurance 13 team, signing some of the biggest names in the sport including Caroline Steffen, Terenzo Bozzone, Brent McMahon and Ben Hoffman.
The Prince decided to start a team for 2017 and has hired Milan Erzen to create it, after the former Slovenian rider, coach and Adria Mobil team manager reportedly helped create some state of the art stables for his race horses. Erzen has already approached a number of riders and agents as he works to build the team around Nibali.
Alex Carera and Nibali are also using their influence to help create the team. Carera is the biggest rider agent in Italy and is using his network of contacts in the sport to help secure rider and technical sponsors. Carera will not give up his work as an agent to manage the team but will have a key role. It seems that Bjarne Riis and former Liquigas manager Roberto Amadio held talks about being the team manager, but Cyclingnews understands that formal role will be officially held by Vladimir Miholjevic, who raced for Liquigas for several seasons and had Carera as his agent.
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