Mark Renshaw Joins Astana Qazaqstan Team as the Sports Director
Mark Renshaw, 40, who collaborated with Astana Qazaqstan Team during this year’s Tour de France as a sprint and lead-out consultant, will join the Kazakh project in 2024 as a Sports Director. Renshaw was outspoken this year during the Tour about Jasper Philipsen’s reckless riding, saying that the UCI needed to be more consistent with their penalty calls.
For next year’s Tour de France, Renshaw will play an even bigger role. In a press release, Renshaw said, “I am very excited to be taking on a Director Sportif role with Astana Qazaqstan for the upcoming 2024 season. After working on the Tour de France alongside the staff and riders at Team Astana Qazaqstan I knew that I have more to give professional cycling.
“With the support of my amazing family, to get back into elite sport I believe I can help lead our talented riders to victories in some of the biggest and best races on the calendar.” One of those victories, of course, will hopefully be Mark Cavendish’s 35th Tour de France stage win.
If anyone can help Cavendish reach his goal, it’s Renshaw. According to Cycling News, “[Renshaw] spent nine of his 15 years as a pro racing alongside Cavendish at Highroad, QuickStep, and Dimension Data, cementing himself as one of the top lead-out men in cycling as the duo racked up countless victories together.”
“We had a very good experience with Mark Renshaw during the Tour de France,” Alexandr Vinokurov, General Manager of Astana Qazaqstan Team said. “His help and advice were very useful not only in the matter of sprint issues but also in general in the matter of race strategy.
“We have a common vision on many things about the team development through the prism of conducting the races and preparation for it. So, I believe that having a young sports director with a different modern vision to cycling would help us to keep on improving.”
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